Shanghai Dragons Finish Winless Season With 0-4 Loss to San Francisco Shock
It’s a rare and special thing when a team goes undefeated for a long stretch of time. It is an even rarer thing when a team has a completely winless season. The Shanghai Dragons accomplished this tragic feat in the Overwatch League’s inaugural season, which came to a close earlier this week.
Shanghai ended the season with a 0-40 record after their loss to the San Francisco Shock in the final match of the season. This kind of struggle is unmatched in professional sports – no team in any major professional sports league has ever posted a winless record in a season as long as the OWL’s. Twelve NFL teams have managed the feat, but none of them had nearly as many chances as the Dragons did to score a single win.
The last match of the season was a blowout and San Francisco Shock swept Shanghai quite easily. On the season, the Dragons posted a negative-120 map differential, a full 42 games worse than the next lowest team. Shanghai won 21 maps, lost 141 and tied two. This was far behind the Florida Mayhem (7-33), who finished the season with a 42-5-120 map record.
This disparity between the Dragons and the rest of the OWL matters at this stage of the league’s existence. If the league wants to be taken seriously in the world of professional sports, it needs to be competitive across the board. And Shanghai just flat-out wasn’t competitive this season. Their roster wasn’t worth of competing at Overwatch’s highest level, and that shouldn’t happen in a professional sports league of any kind.
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— Overwatch League (@overwatchleague) June 16, 2018
The Dragons are currently China’s only OWL team, and so they decided to start the season with an all-Chinese roster. However, they didn’t field China’s best Overwatch players. For example, the roster didn’t include a single player from the Miraculous Youngster roster that placed fourth at the APAC Premier in October 2017 and beat strong Korean sides in the Nexus Cup.
There is enough talent in China to create a team that can compete at OWL’s level, but Shanghai simply didn’t build that roster this season. The team had some decent DPS players, but was extremely lacking in its tank line and support play.
In the middle of the season, though, Shanghai did add a trio of Korean players to their lineup. Unfortunately, this change didn’t reflect in the team’s performance. Stage Four saw just four map wins from the Dragons, which was worse than their performance in Stage One without the reinforcements.
It’s important to note, though, that Shanghai’s problems go deeper than their roster. The team also needs to improve their coaching and their management in order to avoid another tough season in 2019. The Overwatch League itself also needs to be careful in selecting future owners and in enforcing a professional standard for teams entering the league.
The Shanghai Dragons really embraced that underdog image, and their die-hard Chinese fanbase stuck to their guns and cheered on their team throughout the season. The team also fielded the first woman in the Overwatch League, Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon, which helped make them something of a fan favorite. Everyone seemed to believe the Dragons would eventually get that win, but there was no happy ending for the underdogs this time.