The best team in New York pro sports doesn""t play football or baseball or hockey or soccer. Clearly, it doesn""t play basketball. A group of young Korean gamers has represented New York sports by dominating their league, going a league-best 34-6 in the inaugural season of the Overwatch League, a competitive gaming league with franchises funded by mainstream sports owners such as the Mets’ Jeff Wilpon, who owns the team, and Robert Kraft.
The New York Excelsior is entering season two with a chip on its shoulder. The all-Korean team was the runaway best team in the league last year, at least until a late-season change to the game""s rules put it at a disadvantage. It was eventually upset by the Philadelphia Fusion in the semifinals. That""s more like a Wilpon team.
Despite the stumble at the end, New York is still the giant in the room. It has an all-star lineup; even bench-riders could start and lead other squads. Season one MVP Seong-hyun “JJoNak” Bang plays a supporting role, but drops enemies like flies. Many "supports" chip in damage the way John Stockton chipped in points as a point guard; JJoNak plays the position more like Steph Curry. He""s flanked by some star damage-dealers like Jong-ryeol “Saebyeolbe” Park and Do-hyeon “Pine” Kim. On Thursday, the second season of the Overwatch League starts, with more teams and road games, and this time around, the Excelsior are looking to secure their rightful throne.
The Overwatch League is an organized, long-term league centered around Overwatch, a video game made by Blizzard Entertainment. Picture heroes like the X-Men forming teams and competing in king-of-the-hill contests, and you’ve got Overwatch. Teams of six compete, filling roles like DPS (damage-per-second, or rather, the ones that eliminate enemy players), support (healers), or tank (standing in the line of fire for the former two).
While these teams battle it out week after week, fans tune in to watch on streaming sites like Twitch, where Blizzard reports viewership in the hundreds of thousands. Teams representing various home states and cities, from Houston to London and Paris to Seoul, all compete in Blizzard’s Burbank studios, holding franchise spots that have been reported to cost millions, with plans to expand so that teams play in their represented cities in future seasons.
The stage will be bigger than ever this season. Disney holds the broadcast rights to Overwatch League (OWL). A condensed version of last year""s grand finals, held in Brooklyn""s Barclays Center, was broadcast on the flagship ABC. This season league will continue to be broadcast on ESPN and ESPN2, with additional special dates on ABC.
This is all to say that the Overwatch League is one of the largest and most visible in a larger trend of competitive gaming, or “esports,” growing every year, working towards a billion-dollar industry mark.
Seong-Hyun "Jjonak" Bang (Robert Paul / Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment)
By the end of that first season, the “NYXL” seemed infallible, having lost only six matches in the regular season out of 40 total matchups. Each match comprises a small best-of series, played out over a number of different maps in the game where teams are given objectives to attack, defend, or secure; New York’s map differential, the difference between their won and lost maps, was +83. The next highest, the Los Angeles Valiant, was +36.
The XL were playing on a completely different level than every other team. In some ways this is easy to explain: New York""s players were very good, an all-star lineup that had already played together in one of OWL""s precursors, the APEX league. Park is a monster Tracer, whittling down foes and evading their attacks; Kim’s Widowmaker play is a highlight reel on repeat, racking up headshots as the long-ranged sniper; and Bang was the MVP for good reason, defining the ideal Zenyatta play as both a supporting healer and threat to send your team’s players back to the respawn.
But this was true of many teams in OWL, and some superbly talented teams foundered. The truth is, NYXL hit its stride at exactly the right time -- and was undercut at exactly the wrong time.
New York was on top, until it wasn""t. (Robert Paul / Robert Paul for Blizzard Entertainment)
The nature of Overwatch is always evolving. Changes are being tested and fixes are being implemented. The greatest difference between sports and esports, besides the medium itself, is that an esports game can be in constant flux as developers tip the scales of balance back and forth, empowering some characters and toning down others, in search of "balance." It’s like the NFL changing the spot for a point-after field goal kick, except if it could also change the shape of the ball and the accuracy of Tom Brady""s arm. And if it could do all these things just weeks before the playoffs began.
A large change to the game had most teams in scramble going into playoffs, but few as much as the Excelsior. Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson, a desk analyst for the Overwatch League broadcasts, told the Daily News over the phone that their strong performances so far formed a blind spot. The team seemed to relax near the tail-end of the season, letting games get closer than they previously had. Accusations of “sandbagging” due to their assured playoff berth were thrown around, later remarked on by one of New York’s players Yeonjun “ArK” Hong on Overwatch talk show OverSight: “It’s not that we didn’t try or something. Though it’s kinda true that we sandbagged, like, one or two matches, I would say.”
“They fell into a trap that a lot of really good teams fall into, where they think they know the game better than other people,” said Wilkinson.
In other words, the Excelsior was so dominant that it could play the game differently than other teams, the way the Golden State Warriors can play differently than teams who do not have Steph Curry. This bred overconfidence. Once the playing field was tilted, it could no longer rely on raw skill and fell in the semifinals to a surging Philadelphia Fusion.
Big boss Pine makes his entrance. (Robert Paul / Robert Paul for Blizzard Enterta)
The Excelsior mixed it up this offseason, making two big additions in Fl0w3R and Nenne, who bring new angles and approaches to the established Excelsior. The additions have analysts like Wilkinson still eyeing this squad as a team to beat in the coming season.
But an abundance of talent also has the potential for friction. “They have some of the best players in the entire world that are forced to be sat on the bench,” said Wilkinson. “Because you can only field six people at a time, and honestly, everybody on this team could be a starting player on pretty much any other team in the league.”
No matter what, this is a team looking for results. Its players weren’t sitting on their laurels in the offseason. Several members were part of the South Korea squad that took the World Cup last November (yes, Overwatch has its own World Cup), with Bang adding another MVP title to his trophy case.
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They’ve been training as well; Park told the Daily News he’s working on several heroes to augment his current hero pool. But breaks are important, as head coach Hyeon-sang “Pavane” Yu noted in an email response to the us that they made sure to take a long break. “We could have had a shorter duration,” wrote Yu. “But the upcoming season is long and we aren’t going to have much time to rest during the season, so we thought it was important.”
For one player, the goal is clear. Bang wrote to us that he was disappointed he didn’t win playoffs MVP last season, but “[his] goal is to get one this season, no matter what.”
There is no question that New York can play and carry the prestige a New York team should — now, much like those ill-fated semifinals, it depends on which squad shows up to play, and which shows up to win.