Cover-Credits:
Evil Geniuses (EG) lifted the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) trophy after defeating 100 Thieves in the fastest finals of the LCS and set a new record. However, the series between Evil Geniuses and Team Liquid (TL) in the 2022 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Spring Finals Qualifier has been drawing lots of attention. EG managed to decimate TL in a dominant fashion and really took the mental advantage in the series after EG’s attack-damage carry (ADC) Kyle “Danny” Sakamaki’s spicy play in the first game of the best-of-five (BO5).
Danny picked up an iconic pentakill after stealing away the Baron Nashor from under TL’s nose, making it one of the greatest plays in the history of League of Legends esports, one that shall be etched into the memories of those who watched it live.
How did Danny steal the Baron Nashor?
Danny managed to secure the Baron Nashor with his auto-attack, that too when Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen had his summoner spell Smite up, courtesy of an in-game mechanic that allows Baron Nashor to level-up mid-combat. With three of the EG members down, only Danny on the Jinx and Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme on the Tahm Kench were up to contest the Baron Nashor that TL started.
TL’s thought process was fairly simple and understandable. The team proceeded to finish Baron and secure the buff since realistically EG would not be able to win a 2v5 situation. Unfortunately for TL, the team members were dealt with a play that they never anticipated.
The Baron Nashor dropped down to 980 and Santorin also had Smite up to execute it perfectly. However, Baron gained 180 health as it leveled up at 29 minutes in the game, and this cost Team Liquid the match. Since the monster leveled up at unfortunate timing, Santorin’s smite did not kill it and Danny ended up securing the buff with his auto-attack. Following this, an excited Jinx proceeded to kill all the TL members who were low on HP and collected a pentakill, as the icing on top of the cake.
Pros and League personalities react to Danny’s play on Jinx
Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi, and William “Meteos” Hartman were some of the former pro players that were watching live and reacted to Danny’s pentakill and Baron Nashor steal as they were co-streaming the game from the NRG Stadium at Houston, Texas. Doublelift pointed out that Danny has been collecting pentas every single split.
Meteos said, “That's actually “the” dream. That’s just the s*** you dream about when you are a kid like ‘I’m gonna be a pro player. I’m just gonna run up 1v5 Baron steal penta’ and that actually just happened.”
While Doublelift, Sneaky, and Meteos were excited and enthused by the play, Nick “LS” De Cesare was shell-shocked in utter disbelief. Just before Danny stole the Baron Nashor, LS read a comment on his chat that said “All Danny has to do is steal Baron and penta” to which LS jokingly said, “True!”
Streamer ForestWithin wrote on Twitter, “I would like to formally apologize for flaming @DannnyIoI for not playing champions q, ironically enough it may lower his skill playing vs these players every day continue on good sir.”
Oracles Elixir’s founder Tim Sevenhuysen wrote on Twitter, “Danny just pulled off possibly the greatest play in the history of the #LCS with that game-winning 2v5 Baron steal into penta. No exaggeration whatsoever.”
Ahead of the 2022 LCS Spring Finals, the analysts relived the iconic moment again as the broadcast played a compilation of the reactions to Danny’s play which included the reactions of the casters and the crowd, too.
According to Oracle’s Elixir and Dot Esports, Danny also broke the record for the most kills earned by a single player during an LCS postseason as he collected 111 kills in the 2022 Spring playoffs. From the looks of it, the Mid-Season Invitational 2022 is going to be quite the entertaining spectacle with talented young players like Danny and T1’s Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong.
