2020 by the numbers
This season was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of winning the Summer Showdown, it was the age of playoff disappointment, it was the epoch of Covid-19….
What a year it’s been (understatement of the century) and we’re eager to put it behind us, but I want to take one last look back in the context of some sobering numbers.
168: that’s the total number of days that our players, coaches and team manager spent in quarantine this year. Our guys had to go through 14-day quarantine when entering (and re-entering) S. Korea to join our training base, returning to their home countries to renew visas, and traveling to countries where the U.S. consulate had not yet shut down to schedule P1 visa interviews in the early days of the pandemic (that was during the age of innocence when we planned to head to L.A. to escape the pandemic and start our season).
29: out of the approximately 250 days from the start of the year until our last match in mid-September, our full squad of players were together in one training facility for a grand total of 29 days. These 29 days were all in January before we moved our training base from China to S. Korea — after that, our Chinese and Western players had to deal with travel and visa restrictions brought on by the pandemic that forced them to go in and out of S. Korea throughout the season (and in Wya’s case, never being able to join the team in Seoul which sadly may have hindered his development).
14: is the total number of matches where one of Eileen, Nero and NeptuNo were not available to play due to being in quarantine or traveling to secure/renew visas. That’s 50% of our 28 matches this season including tournaments and playoffs where one of our core contributors (who competed for starts when available to the team) could not play.
That’s enough of that. All teams faced similar challenges this year and we were certainly not the only ones impacted by the pandemic. But I do want to pause to applaud our players, coaches and staff who — despite the interruptions, uncertainties and patchwork lineups—persevered to bring home the Summer Showdown trophy and finish 5th overall in the league.
Now I’ll widen the lens a bit.
Check out the below, which lists the combined regular season records and win percentages (i.e. wins divided by total matches) from the first 3 seasons of the league:
We’re #5. And we’re #2 among S2 expansion teams, a fraction behind Vancouver.
I combined the regular season records the first 3 years of the league — if you do this only for the 2 years we’ve been in the league (2019–2020), this table looks a bit different when excluding S1 records. San Francisco would displace NYXL as #1, Shanghai moves ahead of us, Florida jumps to mid-table, etc., but we’d remain near the top.
There are a few points that I want to make, in looking at this table. (Ok ok aside from bragging a little while we can, which I apologize for but feels so damn good to do, because it’s so damn hard to win at this level.)
First, kudos to our players. Especially our Class of 2019, the founding members of our team that fought with us for 2 season. This group includes Rio, Chara, Eileen, Nero, Happy and Shu. Together, they started out as a slept-on group that were mocked by the league’s own analysts, but ended this year as MVP candidate, Summer Showdown champions and among the most prized free agents of this off-season.
Second, I want to comment on an article from GGRecon which posited that there is “a strong correlation between team budget … and end of regular-season standings”. I disagree. Teams at the top of this table do spend, but, from what I can gather anecdotally, some of the bottom teams spend just as much (if not more).
We don’t have access to other teams’ roster budgets, but the league does share score cards that let us know which quartile our roster budget rests (without identifying any of the other teams). Based on these score cards, I can tell you that while we are in the top quartile in win percentage, we are not in the top quartile in roster budget. This is one of the metrics that we strive for, to over-achieve on a sort of “dollars per win” basis.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re not cheapskates — we invest in our players and coaching staff, we have a full support staff of managers and analysts, and we’re going to unveil our world class training facility in the coming months.
But I think this does point toward an emerging identity for our competitive operations where, looking at this year’s 2 NBA finalists, we aspire to be more like the Miami Heat organization that values identifying and developing young talent and less like the Los Angeles Lakers organization that acquires established stars in the transfer market.
After 3 seasons of OWL, I think it’s starting to emerge which teams take what approach. And as several teams are undergoing a reset or full rebuild this off-season, it will be interesting to see which path they choose. For fans out there, instead of just thinking about your team as full budget or low budget, it might also be interesting to look at your team (and think about their success or failure) through this type of lens.
There’s no right or wrong approach, both the Lakers and the Heat made the NBA finals this year, and many teams are probably a hybrid, but we lean toward Pat Riley thus far.
Third, to get back to our Class of 2019, you’re probably wondering about the elephant in the room, that given the success of our core group, why the hell did we let Shu, Nero, and Happy leave in free agency?
We actually started talks with all 3 players as early as the 2019 off-season about potential extensions and continued these discussions throughout this season, but in the end each player had his own reason for choosing free agency.
In Shu’s case, we knew that while he was open to extending with us, he really wanted to test his value on the open market.
In Nero’s case, he’s been transparent with us about his desire to be on a team with more of a Western presence. And as 2020 wore on, it became obvious that given continuing uncertainties around Covid-19 related travel and visa restrictions, we as a team can’t risk our starters missing matches in 2021, and Nero shouldn’t put his future value at risk by missing chunks of the season.
And in Happy’s case, he told us after his first season with us that because esports careers tend to be brutally short, he was eager to chase life experiences that may not be possible after his career is over. He wanted to experience living in the U.S. and being on a Western team. He gave us his all, and in return we wanted to help him reach his goals — we put Happy in touch with one of the best agents in the business who has a great network among Western teams, and wished him the best (while smiling through our tears).
We feel like proud parents watching our kids leave the nest. We feel like we did our jobs to provide them with their first opportunity and help them develop, and their next big fat contracts are sort of like a validation of what we want to achieve as an organization.
So as we assemble our roster for 2021, we want to try to hold fast to what we believe in — trust our scouting to find the next class of young talents, work with coaches who believe in player development, invest to retain while looking for value in the transfer market, and always strive toward winning a championship.
Thanks for reading.
