Today we talk about the Netease backed Shanghai Dragons, (上海龙之队), and how the “record setting” OW team will make a glorious return to the Overwatch League in 2019.
Shanghai Dragons (SHD) is one of the few teams that started the inaugural season with a bang, although not the type of bang they would have hoped for coming into it. They managed to go for 40 consecutive defeats setting a record for most consecutive losses in a professional sport ever. The honor used to be held by the Philladephia 76ers in the NBA with 28.
While it is always nice to set and hold a record in your first competitive season, it would also be nice if you get to stop losing all the damn time. I believe the end of this inglorious streak is only two weeks away.
Let’s break down how the “worst” team of 2018 is going to dominate in the upcoming season.
Two of the most sought after rosters coming into the free agent-signing window of 2018 were the South Korean Contenders Season 2 finalist teams RunAway and KongDoo Panthera. The two teams played a final match that in the view of many was better than the Overwatch League Grand Final. The eight map fiesta filled with drama, ties and reverse sweeps showed league scouts the true strength of the South Korean Contenders scene.
If you missed out the epic brawl or just want to re-watch the best OW final of 2019 here’s a link below.
Now, we have already covered a bit of how things went down for the RunAway roster in our previous article, the KongDoo Panthera roster on the other hand; Coach “BlueHaS” included, were signed with the Shanghai Dragons. They also brought in Min-seong “diem” Bae from Lucky Future Zenith. We will get to him in a second.
The SHD announced their roster on social media soon after.
With the Korean heavy roster in tow fans started hopefully hinting the most anticipated matchup of the new season Carpe vs Diem. There is a whole backstory here, but it is quite simple. Two friends play the game since the release and coin their nicknames based on a Latin aphorism. One gets to play for the Philadelphia Fusion the others heads to China and plays for Lucky Future Zenith and they don’t meet competitively together or on opposing sides for a year. The gods of competitive Overwatch smile down upon us and Diem gets signed with SHD and finally we get to witness which one gets to “seize the day” once the teams finally meet.
On paper and in my opinion the current Shanghai Dragons lineup is the 3rd best in the entire league. (We will see the next two in the upcoming weeks)
We do not have to wait any longer to see SHD in action. They play Hangzhou Spark in just two weeks’ time on February 15th 2019 when OWL2019 finally commences. Meanwhile, while preparation for the season is underway SHD social media is buzzing with cool tweets and hype creating content:
