On March 24 2016 21:58 Cele wrote: nice article, wrong section as always
How flash became a top player has zero relevance to Starcraft 2.
no it's perfect, we the sc2 players are the one that need info on this.
For instance I kinda new all this, but I didn't quite realize how recent it was,to me Flash reign was old memories, instead it actually occured when sc2 beta was about to start...
On April 08 2016 08:27 Lebesgue wrote: Anybody remembers the Winner's League? Flash would come up at freaking all-kill top teams, one after the other. And the ease with which he was doing it against top pros was unbelievable. It seriously seemed as if he solved the game at that time.
I remember connecting the pc to my tv for the KT vs MBC winners league final. MBC was up 3-1 and everyone knew that the real games were only just about to begin. And KT was very well still the favorite, coz Flash hasnt played yet. I still remember the PR writeup: MBC had three chances to try and take down Flash, and they threw everything they had at him. Sea, DT cheese, Carrier cheese. It all failed. Flash was absolutely indestructible.
But on the brightside it left a aura of myth and wonder around BW proscene. We can only fantasize what would have happened. It's like when Firefly was shut down and became a legendary sci-fi show.
Call me a homer or old but NaDa will always remain the greatest for me. It was a great article and very convincing which is the highest praise I can give you as someone with the staunchest of allegiances. I will never forget the grand slam of him winning OSL, KPGA( what became MSL) and GhemTV SL, or going 15-1 in KT-KTF to cruise through Boxer to a win.
Guys like NaDa and Julyzerg are timeless man because time and time again they would rise up when people thought they were done especially in the BW days.
I'd like to point out that during his 2010 run Flash gave us what I consider to be the greatest TvT series of all time against Fantasy, who actually managed to give God a run for his money. If you still think it's a boring matchup, check out this nail-biter.
Yet, even the reigning greatest-of-all-time couldn’t help but seem lacking compared to the young Terran. Flash had been more dominant at his peak, winning more games at a better rate. Flash had won multiple Proleague MVP awards and had dragged his team to a championship; NaDa had no such accolades. Flash had triumphed over the second best player of his era to attain greatness; NaDa had been challenged, but not to that extent. In spite of NaDa’s immense stature, the facts suggested that he who shined brightest had eclipsed he who shined longest.
I think this paragraph in particular rubs off the wrong way. It's simply flawed logic.
1) Flash had been more dominant at his peak, winning more games at a better rate.
The best season that Flash had saw him reach levels that no player had ever reached before, but are we simply going by the number of championships and pretend that Flash had accumulated a career that is similar to NaDa's, and have him win by default due to his peak being more memorable?
Even if we go by what happened purely in OGN StarLeagues and MSL, it is painfully clear that NaDa outstrips Flash in every single measurement possible except for the number of titles. That's right. More finals reached. More round of four appearances. Same goes for every single bracket stage possible, made more impressive by the fact that it was harder to sustain that level of excellence in the past due to the relative shortage of seeds in NaDa's era. Hell, there were MSL tournaments you were punished for dropping out of the round of 16 by not being able to enter the following MSL. Flash played in an era where you started off the round of 32, and were seeded automatically into the next MSL if you got to the round of 8.
Now it is true that NaDa did it over a much longer time frame, and it is entirely possible that Flash would have gone on to achieve more before being rendered to a mere shadow of his former self like NaDa during his latter years. However, I believe that we should be dealing with tangibles here when we're discussing such lofty titles like the greatest player of all time. Otherwise we can make believe ourselves into just about anything.
It's simply not fair to disregard all the accomplishments that NaDa had over Flash.
2) Flash had won multiple Proleague MVP awards and had dragged his team to a championship; NaDa had no such accolades.
Really? Are we going to judge everyone by modern standards? That's like me saying NaDa had won over a dozen individual tournaments outside of his six majors, compared to the measly five that Flash managed over his entire career. Flash played in an era where ProLeague performances greatly determined how you were judged as a player. NaDa played in an era where the ProLeague MVPs were claimed by the likes of Zerglee and SiLvEr. Hardly the stellar trophy everybody longed for like the modern era.
In comparison, NaDa's greatest year in 2002 saw zero ProLeague or Team League format available, and the subsequent years had him split time between one versus one games, and two versus two games. Even so, his record in these leagues are not that shabby. He was the third most successful player in terms of individual wins in the Team League, only behind XellOs and JJu, and ahead of the likes of iloveoov and ChoJJa. He had the most number of one versus one wins in the ProLeague ahead of any other player until Jaedong displaced him in an era where you could get like 50 wins in a season due to the massive inflation in the number of matches available. I haven't even begun to mention the fact that NaDa boasted a two versus two win rate of over 80%, and hard carried his team with his one versus one and two versus two prowess, and this article is horribly reducing his past performance to basically nothing, when by the same harsh standards NaDa's contemporaries (such as BoxeR, and YellOw) would pale even further in comparison to the impressive accomplishments that the modern ProLeague setting allows.
3) Flash had triumphed over the second best player of his era to attain greatness; NaDa had been challenged, but not to that extent.
No. Flash played in the era of Taek-Beng-LeeSsang. NaDa brought an end to what was then thought to be the greatest domination the world had ever seen (BoxeR's era), and battled hard to challenge, and sometimes overcome the likes of Nal_rA, iloveoov, July, and sAviOr. This article tries to make it out as if one single rival is an accurate portrayal of a player's overall worth. It simply is not so. Flash may have lost out on titles due to the resistance that his contemporaries were able to put up, but it's the same for NaDa. In fact, I don't think it should be a slight to NaDa that he managed to accomplish so much battling against great players who were from entirely different eras. I actually find it even more impressive.
I remember coming to TL as a wide-eyed little Terran player in late 07 / early 08, and seeing all the "Flash vs Mind" debates of the time. I don't remember why I decided I liked Flash more... maybe just because he was younger?
Being a Flash fan in late 2008 - mid 2009 was pretty painful. It was obvious that he was a "top player," but he lost his individual league magic (thanks 14CC?) and kept losing to the likes of Kwanro. I can imagine that a year later, Bisu fans must've felt the same thing, but by then, Flash was God and I didn't care about the likes of Bisu
2011-12 Flash was back to disappointing, at least compared to the absurd standard he'd maintained before. Versus other top players, he began looking a little mortal again. As a Flash fan, I'm sad to say that I doubt he would've returned to his previous heights had SC2 not come along; maybe he would've returned to #1, but staying God for so long, especially with his hand problems, seemed unlikely.
EPT
