The Chosen One and the Unkillable Demon King: A Tale of Two GOATs
With news that LeBron James has full autonomy in his future with the Los Angeles Lakers dropping this week, I found myself drawing a comparison to esports’ undisputed Greatest [player] of All Time (GOAT), Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok of T1 League of Legends. Faker and LeBron, the two most dominant forces in the history of their respective sports, have both, in this (expected) final chapter of their careers, been given a metaphorical ‘hall-pass’ to pursue the rest of their playing time on their own terms. Respect like this is not given, but earned, and both of these incredible athletes have played so well for so long that it is only fitting that their respective management teams have lent them the green light to navigate the twilight of their careers this way.
Early Dominance: From Akron to the LCK
That being said, the situation these two find themselves in currently, at least competitively speaking, could not be more different. This piece aims to break down the history of LeBron James and Faker’s rise to the top, what they mean to their sports, and how they’re currently contributing to their teams.
LeBron James: The King of Cleveland
LeBron James was always destined to be a star. Back in 2002, while still in high school, he was plastered on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s magazine with the words “The Chosen One” right beside him. He was just 17 years old then, but his meteoric rise whilst playing basketball at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, was just too much to overlook for many basketball pundits. The Ohio native was a legendary player who was seen not just as a surefire NBA contributor but as the future face of the league. Fate would have it that the hometown Cleveland Cavaliers, coming off a horrific 17-65 season the year prior and with a 22.5% chance to win, secured the #1 pick in the 2003 NBA Draft. James was anointed the King of Cleveland before his first NBA dribble, but quickly proved why after a commanding rookie season where he averaged 20.9 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.9 assists per game and was named Rookie of the Year in 2004. It wouldn’t take long for ‘The King’ to lead the Cavaliers to the NBA playoffs, earning them a postseason berth in just his third season. The NBA was officially put on notice: the entire league was ‘under new management.’
Faker’s Rise: The Birth of a Legend in Season 3
For Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok, his journey started from far humbler beginnings. In Season 3 of League of Legends competitive play (2013), Faker was just a Korean kid who would dominate the online ranked ladder in the mid lane. South Korea Telecom (SKT) took notice. They scooped him up that February and formed a team around his spectacular talent in the middle of the map. In the first tournament that SKT entered into, Olympus Champions Spring 2013, they placed 3rd, and talk started about Faker’s statistics among analysts and teams alike. In a matter of months, Faker had vaulted himself from a mere ‘ranked demon’ to within consideration of the best player in the world. He wouldn’t let this momentum stall either, receiving MVP honors in the HOT6IX Champions 2013 Summer split and securing his first-ever League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) appearance in his rookie year. Faker had the press buzzing about his miraculous outplays, smothering lane phases, and ridiculous teamfighting coming into Worlds 2013 – so much so that a “Korean Hype Train” led by famed analyst Christopher ‘Montecristo’ Mykles was born. Also during this tournament, in an interview preceded by another dominant Faker series against Chinese OMG Esports, OMG mid laner Yu ‘Cool’ Jia Jun dubbed the T1 superstar the ‘Unkillable Demon King,’ a nickname that would stick for his entire career. Not one to be fazed by expectation, Faker more than lived up to the moniker by not only reaching the grand finals but sweeping the Chinese Royal Never Give Up (RNG) squad that challenged him, earning his first Worlds trophy at just the age of 17.
Building a Dynasty: Championships and Superteams
LeBron wouldn’t take long to find the brightest lights in the NBA, earning his first NBA Finals berth in 2007 at the age of 22. This appearance, which ended as a quick 4-0 in favor of the San Antonio Spurs, was the first in the history of the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise and an important stepping stone for LeBron. He used this defeat as fuel for his future playoff series, where, despite being surrounded by subpar talent, he consistently went above and beyond to drag undeserving teams deep in the NBA Playoffs. His conference finals losses, both in 2009 and 2010 after winning the regular season MVP, served as a catalyst for the first major shift of LeBron’s career. He chose, after a disappointing playoff series against the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join the Miami Heat and assemble a superteam with fellow Eastern Conference All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors. He joked in pressers afterwards that the team would win “not 1, not 2, not 3 (championships)...” and ignited a hatred within Cleveland fans who wished him failure for leaving his hometown and the city that drafted him. It was time to prove that the disappointment in ‘07 and the ensuing playoff runs were not his fault, and that he could be ‘the guy’ on a championship team. In 2011, his first full season in Miami, James was presented another chance to claim the NBA title but disappeared in multiple fourth quarters throughout the Finals series to drop to 0-2 in the title game. It was only in the next year, LeBron’s third MVP season, that Miami would finally overcome their demons and win the 2012 NBA championship, defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder 4-1.
SKT T1’s Golden Age: Faker’s Early Worlds Titles
Faker’s first title at Worlds meant that the weight of the crown was now placed on his shoulders. In the ensuing regular season, at OnGameNet (OGN)’s Pandora.TV Champions Winter 2013-14, Faker and SKT would put together the most dominant split in OGN history, and quite possibly the most dominant stretch of League of Legends ever. SKT did not lose a single game, sweeping every series to the final, where – once again – Faker flexed his jaw-dropping mechanics and mind-blowing plays to secure a 3-0 series win against Samsung Ozone in the finals. Already, Faker’s best player in the world title was starting to look like “Best Player Ever” status, but when his support Lee ‘PoohManDu’ Jeong-hyeon or Mandu was forced to step away because of health issues, SKT and Faker’s performance took a dip. They struggled that spring to uphold their lofty expectations, and a missed Worlds opportunity in 2014 meant that SKT would not have the chance to defend their title.
Overcoming Adversity: The Return to the Top
With the monkey finally being lifted off his back thanks to a 2012 championship and Finals MVP, an unkept promise to Miami still lingered for LeBron. He set out on an encore tour for his 2012 MVP, winning it again the following year and doubling up on his titles and Finals MVP trophies in 2013 against the San Antonio Spurs, vanquishing the team that had trounced him in his first Finals appearance. All was not sunshine and rainbows in Miami, though, as age and regression started to set in on Miami’s ‘Big Three’, leading to a flustered 2014 playoff campaign. James narrowly missed out on the 2014 MVP to up-and-coming OKC Thunder forward Kevin Durant, and would also suffer a loss in the finals rematch to the 2014 Spurs, 4-1. With his contract expiring in Miami, LeBron made the bold choice to return to Cleveland, his hometown, which had drafted him before turning their backs and burning his jerseys in 2010. The goal? To bring Cleveland their elusive first NBA title.
In 2015, SKT’s sister teams merged, leaving behind the iconic SKT T1 roster featuring stars like Bae ‘Bang’ Jun-Sik and Lee ‘Wolf’ Jae-won in the bottom lane alongside Faker, now splitting time with the former midlaner for the other SKT squad: Lee ‘Easyhoon’ Ji-hoon. Despite fan pressure to start Faker, Easyhoon was played most often. However, it was a late-season surge powered by Faker that earned the squad a bid at the 2015 Mid Season Invitational (MSI) tournament. There, they defeated European FNATIC 3-2 before a classic matchup with Chinese superpower EDward Gaming (EDG), where in Game 5, EDG baited Faker into selecting his legendary, undefeated LeBlanc. EDG promptly drafted a composition designed to shut down Faker, resulting in a 3-2 victory for the Chinese representatives. Faker would bounce back in Summer, cleanly winning the domestic Korean split before losing only a single game at Worlds 2015 to claim his second Worlds title.
His second stint with the Cavs started with a bang, as they fielded a roster centered around James and his new “big three:” Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. When the team finished the regular season, however, the injury bug crept up, taking out players one by one, including Kevin Love in the Eastern Conference semifinals and Kyrie in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. LeBron attempted to emulate the carry job he was doing before leaving the city originally, but it was not enough to overcome the Golden State Warriors, who closed the series out in 6 games. In 2016, LeBron’s revenge tour began, with a dominant regular season that was overshadowed by a historic 73-9 record by the Warriors out west. In the finals, LeBron would accomplish the impossible by not only leading his team back from a 3-1 deficit, something that had never been done before in the NBA Finals, but by leading the entire series in every major statistical category. Points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks – James did it all, and none were more important than what is perhaps the defining moment of his career: a chasedown block on Warriors forward Andre Iguodala that sealed the win for the Cavaliers and LeBron’s first trophy for the city that drafted him. A full circle moment that would be short-lived, as the following years would be plagued by Eastern Conference dominance followed by an insurmountable talent mismatch in the NBA Finals. Kevin Durant, who had sneakily taken away James’ MVP in 2014, was now the star of the show in Golden State, winning two NBA titles alongside Finals MVP honors in 2017 and 2018.
Coming off the roaring success of 2015 Worlds, SKT slumped early domestically, falling short in the semifinals of the Korean Esports Association’s League of Legends Cup. Doing as Faker does, a quick turnaround in the spring split, topped off with a domestic victory, earned the roster a spot at MSI 2016. There, Faker and SKT recaptured the glory of the MSI tournament that they missed out on a year prior. Later that year, after a second-place finish in the Korean summer split, they would finish as Worlds champions again, marking the only team to ever win the world championship three times, and the first (and only) repeat winners of Worlds. Faker continued to rack up achievements, including an MSI win in 2017, and his resume densified alongside it. By spring 2018, he had won 6 domestic trophies in Korea, 2 Mid-Season Invitationals, and 3 world championships. He was, by all extents of the phrase, the greatest. Faker would soon learn, however, that even paradise isn’t immune to the sunset. Worlds 2017 marked the beginning of a struggling time for SKT, who would later rebrand to the much cleaner T1, as they fell in the grand finals 0-3 to Samsung White (who would later become Gen.G Esports). Faker’s rosters began to shuffle around him, and as he aged, he couldn’t cling to his server-shifting mechanics to carry every game like he could in his youth. 2018 and 2019 ended without a single international trophy for T1, but domestic titles in both Spring and Summer of the latter. By now, the former OGN domestic league had transformed into the most popular league in the history of League of Legends: the League Championship of Korea, or the LCK. 2020 would bring a spring LCK trophy, Faker’s 9th, but a loss to Gen.G in the regional finals meant that Faker would once again miss out on a chance at the international crown.
As LeBron continued to age, and his roster was rebuilt and retooled to try to compete with the unstoppable force out West, his patience (and hair) thinned. In the summer of 2018, James would take his talents right to Golden State’s doorstep, joining the storied franchise of the Los Angeles Lakers. After a couple of seasons of disappointing finishes in LA, LeBron and the Lakers would make a huge playoff run in ‘The Bubble’ or the NBA season held during COVID in 2020. LeBron and fellow All-NBA teammate Anthony Davis would give the city its 17th championship, and after receiving finals MVP honors, James became the only player in NBA history to win Finals MVP on three different teams. A true testament to his ability to alter the course of a franchise. The past five years have been rather quiet for LeBron and the Lakers, at least championship-wise. They had an opportunity to potentially make a deep playoff run in 2023, but were silenced by an incredible series from Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray in the Western Conference finals. James and the Lakers won the first iteration of the NBA’s in-season tournament (IST), but without nearly the same pomp and fanfare that a regular championship brings.
Entering 2021, T1 returned to the drawing board and brought in rejected support Ryu ‘Keria’ Min-seok from fellow domestic rival DRX. Without a single trophy throughout the year, but a top 4 finish at Worlds, fans began to wonder if this was the beginning of the end for Faker. He hadn’t been at the top of the world for almost 5 years now, and if his supporting cast kept rotating, it seemed he might never make it back. That was until T1 decided to revamp their roster heading into 2022. T1 promoted its academy players, homegrown talents from their farm system, to the main roster heading into 2022, including future stars like Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je, Mun ‘Oner’ Hyeon-jun, and Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyeong. This roster, labeled ZOFGK for the first letter of Zeus, Oner, Faker, Guma(yusi), and Keria’s in-game tags, would form the newest dynasty for the illustrious T1 branding. After winning the LCK spring split with an undefeated 18-0 regular season, T1 made a mad dash for the MSI finals, Faker’s first international finals since Worlds 2017. Faker continued to get so close to the finish line, slipping at the final hurdle, as T1 fell to old foe RNG in a heartbreaking 5-game series. Second-place finishes would continue to plague T1 in 2022, as they would succumb to Gen.G in the 2022 LCK summer finals and then Keria’s old team DRX in the grand finals of Worlds. Running it back with the same ZOFGK core in 2023, T1 finished spring with a 17-1 regular season and a second-place finish to Gen.G domestically. At MSI, T1’s momentum stalled once more, leaving with a 3rd place finish to China’s BiliBili Gaming (BLG). After a summer split that saw Faker step away for some time to treat a wrist injury, a stretch that saw T1 lose 7 of 8 games in his absence, T1 stumbled into the LCK summer playoffs with a 9-9 record. Thanks to their earlier performance in the year, T1 qualified for Worlds on points and represented the LCK as the second seed, with Faker finally back and ready to play.
2023: Faker and T1 Shut Down the "Golden Road"
At Worlds 2023, the dominant storyline surrounded Chinese superteam JD Gaming (JDG), who had spent a rumored $16 million to assemble what was considered an unbeatable team. JDG mopped the floor with their domestic competition in both Spring and Summer, beat BLG in the finals of MSI, and were now seeking the chance to make League of Legends history by completing the “golden road.” T1, after defeating BLG and avenging their MSI loss in the swiss stage, made it to the best-of-five series playoffs. In the quarterfinals, they faced Chinese league MVP and former SKT member Lee ‘Scout’ Ye-Chan, whom they swiftly swept 3-0. This set up a date with destiny, a semi-final matchup maybe bigger than any Worlds final we could’ve seen, T1 versus JDG. The pre-match teaser, a video shrouded in legacy now, showcased Faker and JDG bot laner Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk talking about the implications for the match. Faker, always the showman, uttered the now infamous line: “All roads lead to me,” in response to Ruler’s claim that the golden road was inevitable. In the end, it was Faker who sealed the game and the series for T1, claiming the series 3-1 and shutting down the golden road. The finals, predestined by this point, ended in a clean 3-0 sweep for T1 over their final Chinese opponent at Worlds 2023, Weibo Gaming. Now, with three different cores, Faker had won the biggest tournament in the world and been the frontman for it. With GOAT status now firmly secured, Faker and T1 entered into 2024 looking to repeat. After a second-place finish to Gen.G in LCK Spring 2024, T1 experienced MSI deja vu, placing 3rd and once again falling to BLG. After a summer split that saw Faker struggle to adapt to a meta that focused on heavily mechanical carry mid lane champions, T1 squeaked their way into Worlds once more as the fourth seed.
By now, nobody was falling for their same old tricks. A new meta that allowed Faker to explore picks outside of the mechanical mids and a bot lane duo that innovated to change the game entirely put T1 on a collision course with another grand finals. This time, another matchup against tournament favorites BLG, who had already taken down T1 at MSI and were looking for their first Worlds win as a franchise. After going down 2-1, all hope was starting to drain from T1, but like clockwork, Faker’s aura reigned supreme. His game 4 Sylas had multiple solo kills and an oppressive lane phase that seemed to turn back the clock, and in game 5, his Galio selection singlehandedly won T1 the series. A 3-2 victory marked Faker’s historic 5th Worlds trophy, a mark that will likely never be seen again. His 2nd series MVP for Worlds finals was also a jaw-dropping 8 years apart from his initial win back in 2016.
Meanwhile, under the bright lights of LA, LeBron built on his media and investment empire, becoming only the second active athlete ever to reach $1 billion in net worth according to Forbes. He acted in the sequel to the legendary Looney Tunes basketball movie ‘Space Jam’ and has appeared in numerous commercials for brands like Nike (where he is a part-owner), as well as Amazon and Sprite. He opened the “I Promise” school in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, targeted to provide education for “at-risk” students. He surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for #1 on the all-time scoring list in the NBA. He championed a movement that supported Black athletes and their stances on civil rights when he refused to “shut up and dribble.” He has won nearly every award there is to offer in the NBA outside of Defensive Player of the Year (which he certainly had an argument for in 2012 and 2013 in Miami). James has defined the era he competed in, the face of the NBA in the 2010s, as the only true contender to Michael Jordan as the basketball GOAT. To the United States and the world at large, LeBron is more than just an athlete; he’s an icon of perseverance and greatness.
Faker, on the other side of the same coin, is a cultural icon. He has appeared on the cover of every kind of magazine from Marie Claire to GQ in Korea, and his presence in the country is the same, if not greater than LeBron’s in America. He is a prolific philanthropist, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he donated to the Community Chest of Korea. In 2020, Faker’s contract with T1 included a minority stake and a blank check, and he currently owns about 5.66% of the company, according to Inven Global. Recently, Faker crossed over into the Korean-pop (K-pop) world as well, making a cameo in Stray Kids’ music video for “Ceremony.” He is soft-spoken but a fearsome force, and was the first player recognized by League of Legends publisher Riot Games into the League of Legends Hall of Fame, the Hall of Legends. Faker’s mere presence at Worlds tournaments determines the viewership of millions of esports fans, and the day he retires will bring a reckoning to Riot Games and League of Legends as a whole. In-game, Faker holds a host of achievements and records that appear nigh untouchable, including most Worlds titles, most international trophies, most kills internationally, most kills in the LCK, most champions played professionally, and more of that same flavor. His longevity is truly rare in esports, and the most insane part is, he doesn’t think he’s anywhere close to done.
For LeBron, these last few years in the NBA have been about upping the counting stats for his records and getting to play professional basketball with his oldest son, fellow Los Angeles Laker Lebron James Jr., or ‘Bronny.’ The fearsome competitive spirit and dominant on-court play have unfortunately begun to escape him as Father Time continues to beckon. According to James, he has but a few seasons left in the tank before he laces up for the last time. Lakers President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka has made it very clear that the organization wants LeBron to operate on his own terms, and he is doing just that. As the 2025-26 season starts kicking into gear, all eyes will be on the workload that James takes on for himself, especially since the arrival of Slovenian All-Star Luka Dončić has propelled the LA team back into playoff talks.
In Korea, Faker is currently packing his bags to prepare for his (obviously) record 10th Worlds tournament in China next month, where T1 has their eyes set on a new record: the first-ever 3-peat. After an offseason filled with drama and turmoil, ZOFGK is no more. Instead, former Gen.G top laner Choi ‘Doran’ Hyeon-joon joins the fray to help T1 recapture the magic that has crowned them back-to-back champs. Gen.G, T1’s long-standing LCK rival, just defeated them in a 5-game series in the MSI grand finals and stand as a major roadblock in their way for a 3rd Worlds trophy in as many years. Fortunately for Faker, he just resigned to be a part of T1 until 2029, so this won’t be the last chance. This Worlds feels particularly difficult for T1, since Faker’s champion pool is out of the meta and quite small compared to some of the other top mid laners in the world. But if there’s one thing you should never do, it’s count out the Unkillable Demon King.
Did I miss any critical moments? Will Faker ever get usurped? Is LeBron ACTUALLY the GOAT of basketball?