[OSL] Jin Air OSL - Finals Preview - Page 6

I think the reason I keep getting invited back to write is because I am a genuine progaming fan who, broadly speaking, knows what's going on and shares that. When awesome shit happens and I'm incredibly hyped I try to share that emotion with you guys. Unfortunately I just didn't feel it for this tournament.

To give some background, the first OSL finals I ever watched was Anytime against Nada. Nada had been the best, a mechanical genius who destroyed all before him until his life was struck with a personal tragedy, the sudden death of his father. He stopped playing and practicing to take time with his family and disappeared off the face of progaming. A few weeks after the funeral he posted this poem.
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When you read those words, you become a Nada fan. When you read those words, you believe.

So the OSL comes around and Nada has lost his usual seed because of his break. He's got to come from the qualifiers (called the ODT in those days). He 3-0s his group. In the ro16 he drops a game. In the ro8 he 2-0s. In the semifinals he 3 fucking 0s his opponent in a one sided beatdown. And suddenly, seemingly with ease, Nada is back in the OSL finals, the most prestigious Starcraft tournament in the world, against all the odds, overcoming tragedy. He promised that he'd look after his family, that he'd become the best, that he'd win for his father and, to watch him play, you believe it.

On the other side of the stage you have Anytime, a returning champion riding the legend of the fall back when that still meant something. In the fall season one Protoss would rise above all others and smash everyone in truly inspirational style. In 2006, Anytime was that Protoss. Anytime had faced a tough road to the finals, denying Midas back when Midas was legitimately the second best Terran in the world in a fantastic 3-2 series. When Anytime stood in the booth that fall he was the embodiment of the OSL, the best the world had to offer with a tournament of victories and a list of crushed opponents to prove it.

Anytime was, logically speaking, the best in the world. He'd earned his place in the OSL finals against the toughest competition possible at the time and he already had a championship under his belt. He was experienced and he was really, really good. Also a joy to watch if that counts for anything. Furthermore Anytime had story. This was the fall and Anytime was the avatar of a tradition that stretched back to the dawn of progaming. But Nada... Nada was just indescribable. He was playing for something more than another win, more than a golden mouse (yeah, it was a golden mouse finals too), something more than a job. He was playing as a celebration of his dead father, he was playing to walk in that man's footsteps, to provide for his family like his father did, to be as strong as his father, to make him proud. When you first read a Letter to the Sky it's emotive but it's just aspirations. When you reread it a year later as Nada walks onto that stage having dropped just one game on his way to the OSL finals it's more than words. Gentlemen, this, is the OSL.

When I think of the OSL I think of that. There have been other worthy OSL finals since then but I think you'd have a tough time arguing that this has anything like the story of the other.