"They’re ready. You’ve got about eight minutes, sorry."
These are stolen minutes in a hectic schedule at the Blizzard Arena. But I’m lucky to get two for the price of one.
Tagged With la valiant
After a hot-and-cold season with Overwatch League team the LA Valiant, DPS player Brady "Agilities" Girardi found himself in a rainy In-N-Out burger parking lot with team CEO Noah Whinston. And a camera person.
Overwatch League matches are played across four maps, and usually the result is a win or loss in those four maps. More often than not it's a 4-0 sweep, or a decisive 3-1. You can even tie on certain maps, leading to score lines such as week 1's Dallas v. Seoul game that ended 2-1. But every now and then a game goes to map five, as OWL matches don't end in ties.
That was the case in Thursday's thrilling Los Angeles-Los Angeles match between the Valiant and the Gladiators, which came down to a winner-take-all final point. The Gladiators came out swinging with a 2-0 start, but the Valiant battled back and took it to a fifth map at 2-2, threatening to pull off a reverse sweep.
On the opening night of Overwatch League, a Dallas Fuel fan at the Blizzard Arena hoisted a sign with the alt-right meme frog Pepe on it, and had it confiscated by event staff before the night was over. But that was only the first meme with racist associations to worm its way adjacent to Blizzard's big mainstream esports push.
