EPT
March 5th: NaDa day to Forget
Lee Yoon Yeol's 2005 IOPS OSL Championship & 2009 Lost Saga MSL Ro8 story
Click here to view the complete VOD playlist
Lee Yoon Yeol's 2005 IOPS OSL Championship & 2009 Lost Saga MSL Ro8 story
Click here to view the complete VOD playlist
March 5th, 2005 – NaDa def. July 3-0 to win 2nd OSL
Why it is significant: Late 2004 and early 2005 would be defined by the power struggle between
NaDa (Lee Yoon Yeol) and the two best Zerg players of the day, 
July (Park Sung Joon) and GoRush (Park Tae Min). The three would clash again and again, in the three biggest individual leagues at the time, the KT-KTF Premier League, You Are the Golf King MSL, and IOPS OSL.NaDa had reigned supreme in the previous season of the KT-KTF Premier League, defeating fellow Terran legends such as
XellOs and BoxeR on his way to the championship. He continued to storm through the next season until he was defeated at the hands of July 2-0 on New Year’s Eve 2004. July would go on to take the title, defeating GoRush 3-2. NaDa would have to settle for 3rd.Two weeks later NaDa would meet GoRush in the YATGK MSL Winner’s Bracket Finals. For nearly 5 years GoRush had been an important member of Greatest Ones’ (later known as CJ Entus) roster, but had never put together a run at a championship. He was playing the best StarCraft of his career, and ZvT showed to be his statistically best match-up. Coming off two wins against XellOs and
Midas, fellow GO players and excellent Terran opponents in their own right, he looked to be on a roll. NaDa would dispatch of him in a hard fought 3-2 win, only to meet again 3 weeks later in the Grand Finals. This time GoRush would get revenge, winning 4-2 and taking the MSL championship badge. This NaDa vs GoRush rivalry would be immortalized by commentators Lee Seung Won and Kim Chul Min’s “AHHHH PLAYGUUUU” call in game 1 of the finals on Luna.July and GoRush had their titles, and NaDa had gone through an intense couple of months of TvZ but had no tournament wins for all the great play he had showed. It would be in the IOPS OSL where NaDa’s hard work paid off. Yet again NaDa, July, and GoRush persevered until the semi-finals of the tournament, where NaDa would have the last laugh in his rivalry with GoRush by defeating him in comeback fashion 3-2. This set up a NaDa vs July finals, one that even NaDa expected to be a close series, saying “What I predicted was 3:2” in a post-match interview. Many saw NaDa as a player not performing to the best of his abilities and expected him to lose to July. Instead NaDa swept the Zerg 3-0 to take the most revered title of the three tournaments. You can read his post-match interview, translated in its entirety thanks to Emlary.
Following the IOPS OSL, NaDa’s performance would continue to fall off, and he would go nearly two more years before he tasted OSL gold again, persevering after his father’s death due to a drunk driver. July would continue to show good results winning one OSL and placing 2nd in another until he began to slump in mid-2006, only to rise again in the 2008 EVER OSL. Finally, GoRush would never quite reach the same heights that he did in the days of YATGK and IOPS and would play out the last 5 ½ years of his career without any more crowning achievements.
March 5th, 2009 – NaDa’s last great hurrah, falling 2-3 to JangBi in Lost Saga MSL Ro8
Why it is significant: Fast-forward 4 years from NaDa’s IOPS OSL victory. He has risen again in the fall of 2006 to win the Panasonic OSL and claim his Golden Mouse, but soon after has sunk into a slump the likes of which he has never experienced in his BW career. He is the last of the original legends that can still truly compete at the highest level, but no one expects him to put up much of a fight in his quarterfinal match-up against the PvT phenom that is
JangBi.Despite having one of the most entertaining PvT’s of 2008 played between the two, best known for its “Most Psi Storm Ever" moment, no one considers the Genius Terran to be a threat and everyone but his most stalwart fans predict a 3-0 or 3-1 victory for JangBi.
The match that would unfold before everyone’s eyes was truly an eye-opener and a testament to NaDa’s resilient skill and work ethic. In his Ro16 interview NaDa stated “… because my goal is to win I am not satisfied by merely securing a seed. I think that I cannot be complacent with this and I must strive to reach a larger goal.” The five-game series would show that the statement was not all for show and that he had truly given his all to try to knock off JangBi.
Artosis would grade NaDa’s play with an A+, stating “NaDa played brilliantly. Game 1 was a thing of pure beauty. In fact, it was the closest thing to a perfect game that has been played since sAviOr was bonjwa or iloveoov before him. No one has played a game of that level in years.” You can read the rest of his comments in TL’s “Dragons and Knights” recap of the Ro8. Alas, for all his effort it would not be enough, and NaDa was defeated, 3-2.
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/JWD/lost_saga_msl/2_1.jpg)
Every BW fans' heart broke this day
