As I rewatched parts of G1 and G2 of the grand finals, WBG doesn’t even seem to belong there. At no point of the series was T1 about to slip any games away. They held firm control of the map and every objectives and the finals is pretty much anticlimatic from the first minute of the first game to the last minute of the series.
JDG games were much closer at 50/50 and T1 was even down like 8k gold in one.
We just extremely unlucky with draw.
Knockouts draw is designed in the way that one part of the map will always have 2 3:2 teams. First they split Gen.G and JDG. Then they match them each to one 3:2 team. Then the remaining 3:2 team they add to pool of 3 3:1 teams and draw them. It means that at least one pair 3:1 vs 3:2 is guaranteed and always one part of the map will have 2 3:2 teams.
Overall it shouldn’t be a big problem, but this year it all were fucked once NRG got WBG. So we not only have 2 3:2 teams at one side, we also have a fking NRG at the same side. The chance that this draw will happen was like 1/9. Only 11% that NRG will be matched with WBG and here we are.
Simple addition of rule “no rematches in 1/4” would already change everything. If we imagine, that for example LNG vs NRG are drawn into Gen.G/BLG side of the bracket and T1 with WBG assigned to JDG/KT, then draw will be waaaaaaaaaaaay better and equalised.
More to this, overall there were 72 possible draws, 36 unique one multipled by 2 as they can be mirrored (if you just simply mirror existing draw, it will count as a unique one due to different selection order but the same result). In 8 of them (4 unique) we have NRG vs WBG. In half of them, it is not a Gen.G but JDG are on the same side with WBG. For example, JDG-BLG, WBG-NRG. People will hate such draw but it was one of those 4 unique options (and 2 from 8 if we add mirroring) and free path for JDG to Finals. Second from those 4 was JDG-KT, WBG-NRG. Free JDG path to Finals. Third one was Gen.G/KT and WBG/NRG. It will guarantee LCK in Semis (highly likely Gen.G) and I think WBG would 95% lost in Semis to either KT or Gen.G.
At the end, only in **1 from 36** unique configurations of draw, we have not only WBG and NRG, but also Gen.G and BLG – such a unique configuration which can deny LCK from meeting WBG till Finals and putting LNG/KT/JDG/T1 in another side of the bracket.
We just got truly truly unlucky