Carpe Gets His Way

There’s a reason that whenever someone refers to The “Winnable” Clutch, Overwatch fans usually know what they mean.
Nothing but questions surrounded the Overwatch League coming into the inaugural season. What would the quality of competition look like? Would Blizzard’s own production live up to the heights of the APEX-dominated, pre-OWL ecosystem they had ousted? Could the league really make good on the more mainstream, accessible experience they were selling to a newer generation of esports fans—and most importantly the franchise owners, who paid in excess of $10 million to be part of the experiment?
Fortunately, the January 2018 launch was successful, and the league quickly took shape over the ensuing months. The NYXL emerged to assert their dominance over the initial favorites, Seoul and Dallas. Players like JJonak, Profit, Fissure, and Striker became early stars as they pushed the limits of their heroes. And in Stage 3, we saw a real challenger to the NYXL as Coach Crusty’s Boston Uprising pulled off the first undefeated stage in OWL history.
But on May 17, 2018, Boston opened up Stage 4 against the Fusion, looking to start another 10–0 run. And though Pine had already rocked the Ilios Well and Fissure had leapt through the skies over Oasis to take out Agilities, in Map 3 of that match, we got what we had been waiting for: the first truly iconic play in OWL history.
The Fusion closed out the series 3–1, and Carpe the superstar was born.
Despite what he’s become in the OWL era, Carpe wasn’t always the legend we now consider him to be. He first appeared on BK Stars in APEX Seasons 2 and 3, but didn’t make it far into the tournament either time. His biggest success came in Season 1 of 2017 North American Contenders, when he joined a FaZe Clan roster that also fielded FCTFCTN, ShaDowBurn, Rawkus, and other familiar names. They made it to finals, but fell 0–4 to the Team Envy that would become the Dallas Fuel. Once the league got underway, though, and with all the world’s best talent in front of him, Carpe began to shine.
And shine. And shine.
It started slow, as despite a strong Stage 2, the Fusion needed time to work out the kinks and implement a more consistent style and lineup. For all his boons, Carpe is a more lone-wolf, hyper-carry type of player, and that requires a team construction that can both survive fights while he’s off hunting and also keep pace when he’s on a murder spree. But coming into the homestretch of the season—and with that career-defining highlight in the bank, among others—Carpe helped take Philly to a sixth seed in the playoffs.
What happened next was almost a miracle.

With a remixed tank line of SADO and HOTBA, the rapidly improving EQO, and a backline capable of playmaking on its own, Carpe suddenly had the exact support that his style requires. He and the Fusion pulled off an underdog run to the finals, toppling the #3 (Boston) and #1 (NYXL) seeds along the way. Though they would eventually crumble under the weight of a London Spitfire team led by the balletic synergy between Gesture and eventual Finals MVP Profit, it was a run that cemented the Fusion as an essential franchise in the OWL landscape, and Carpe as a true blue superstar in the league.
The 2019 season was… a bit different.
The new threats of San Francisco and Vancouver turned the competition on its head, drastically raising the bar for returning teams. The flexible HOTBA moved onto new pastures with Guangzhou. Three stages of GOATS meta essentially wiped out the influence of DPS players and forced Carpe onto Zarya, while SADO struggled on Reinhardt. And despite EQO stepping up as a fiery shotcaller in contrast to his calm offstage demeanor, the Fusion as a collective struggled to evolve—a worrying sign for a team that was built on running back their near-championship squad almost entirely.
And so, as this pattern developed over the early weeks of the season, amid questions of Philly’s legitimacy as a contender and cries of “Free Fragi!” from the fans, the rumblings began:
The franchise superstar might not be happy.
Now, the claim that Carpe refused to play alongside Fragi was, and still is, debated. Situations are rarely so cut and dry, and any number of confounding variables could be at play—language barriers, favored strategies, and so on.
But the one thing that can’t be argued is this: the prediction “You will never see Carpe and Fragi in the same lineup” came completely true. Fragi played one single map in the OWL 2019 season… for the Guangzhou Charge.
As this particular narrative gained steam and Philly eventually failed to qualify for playoffs, more fuel was added to the fire. Carpe’s contract only covered the first two years of OWL, and he could potentially be a free agent ahead of 2020. If the superstar really was disgruntled as a result of the Fusion’s 2019 season, would they be able to keep their franchise player?
As it turns out, yes.
But that wasn’t the end of the news. New head coach KDG was brought in from the Seoul Dynasty. Neptuno, Elk, and trade acquisition Kyb said their goodbyes, while SADO stuck around. Then came the pickups: FunnyAstro from ATL Academy. Alarm from Fusion Uni. Underrated DPS Ivy from a rebuilding Toronto Defiant. And finally, debatably the crown jewel of their offseason, the inimitable Fury from the London Spitfire. Add in the return of EQO and Boombox, and it suddenly clicked together:
The Fusion are going all in on their superstar.
Let’s hit the pause button on Overwatch real quick. There’s another superstar we need to talk about.

(It’s LeBron, guys.)
If you’re a basketball fan, I probably just spoiled a big chunk of this article for you. But let’s all go on the adventure together.
OK, so LeBron James. For the complete sports neophytes that have only heard his name in passing, here it is: he’s the biggest basketball icon of this generation, and most of the NBA world yells about whether he or Michael Jordan is the GOAT. Four-time MVP, three-time champion, three-time Finals MVP, 15-time All-Star. Highest Value Over Replacement and career Plus/Minus for a player ever, eclipsing Jordan (for the stats nerds). The list of his accomplishments needs its own giant Wikipedia page. And anyone who’s watched his career over the last nearly 20 years knows one thing: when LeBron is on a team, it’s his team.
Because, you see, LeBron was one of the biggest players in the NBA before he was even in the NBA. James was literally and figuratively dunking on the high school competition so hard that he had become a national phenomenon, and unlike Carpe, had superstardom expected of him.

So when the Akron, Ohio-native LeBron was selected first overall in the 2003 draft for the Cleveland Cavaliers, it was one of the most memorable moments in Ohio sports history—which is its own sad tale of misery and loss.
Sure enough, LeBron was a force of nature. He was Rookie of the Year in his first season, made his first All-Star team the next, and it wasn’t long before playoff appearances were the rule instead of the exception for Cleveland. However, the Cavs proved unable to string together a postseason sequence where both LeBron and the rest of the team were firing on all cylinders, and the championships that were expected of James just didn’t materialize. That’s when the discourse began: was LeBron happy in Cleveland? Were they capable of building a squad that could support and unlock their franchise player’s potential?
We’ll be here all day if we get too deep in the weeds, but what occurred next turned LeBron from a superstar into an industry unto himself.

Between the 2009 and 2010 NBA seasons, LeBron became a free agent. What ensued was one of the most dramatic media circuses in basketball, as James courted and teased large swaths of the league with the potential of gracing their franchises with his generational talent, culminating in a live announcement special on ESPN. The Decision has gone down in infamy as a prime example of superstar pretentiousness, but two things made it particularly hard to stomach. One is that, at the end of the day, where LeBron landed was this important to the state of the league.
The second is that LeBron went to the Miami fucking Heat of all places.
In a sequence of events that could easily comprise its own documentary, LeBron had managed to convince fellow free agent and All-Star Chris Bosh to follow him on a journey to the Miami Heat, where they would join forces with the legendary Dwayne Wade and form a superteam—now known to history as the Big Three. While the initial seasons were marred by intense fan vitriol and some growing pains as the Heat completely reformed around their new core, eventually, the Big Three did what they came to Miami to do. They won back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013, with both Finals MVP awards going to the man who had put it all together.
There was no longer any doubt: LeBron wasn’t just a superstar, he was the most powerful figure in all of basketball.
As the years have gone on, James has proved over and over that he calls the shots, and is the kind of superstar worth making almost any concession for. He brought the Heat two championships when they gave him what he wanted. Then things slowed down in Miami, and he went BACK to Cleveland in 2014—but not without the requisite pageantry.

There, he went to work on the roster. He convinced General Manager David Griffin to deal top 2014 draft pick Andrew Wiggins for a star strategic piece in Minnesota All-Star Kevin Love, and continued to phase in his favorites while phasing out assets he deemed inessential. The result? The championship that was promised to Cleveland all those years ago, when the Cavs toppled the mighty Golden State Warriors in 2016.
But then things once again slowed down too much for LeBron’s liking, as the team he had built failed to produce another title in the face of the Warriors’ continued dynasty. So the superstar rallied his banners and created yet another superteam, convincing one of the most freakishly talented players of all time and literal Monstar Anthony Davis to join him in what figures to be the last major chapter of his career on the Los Angeles Lakers.
And it only cost the Lakers one of the biggest trade hauls of the century.
Non-NBA fans: that‘s what a full send for LeBron looks like.
We’ve gone over a LOT of information, and it only scratches the surface. LeBron has slashed and burned his way through the NBA for almost 20 years, and it’s hard to boil down one of the most illustrious careers in sports history into just a few paragraphs, or fully analyze how his truly incomparable talent has been both bolstered and sabotaged by demands and nepotism. His impact is immeasurable; the amount of power he’s been able to wield was instrumental in kicking off what’s now widely known as the “Player Empowerment Era” in the NBA, in which superstars are lauded for leveraging their talent to attract other stars, fans, and media attention to franchises that will appease them. NBA champion Kawhi Leonard is doing the same thing as LeBron in the same building right now with the Los Angeles Clippers.
He’s loved, he’s hated, he could be the best person to ever touch a basketball. They call him the King, and sometimes, the line between a king and a tyrant can be mighty thin. But I think this quote from The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor, as he examined the Love-for-Wiggins trade with a few years’ hindsight, says
it best:
“When the Cavaliers failed to surround LeBron with enough talent to win a title during his first stint with the team, LeBron left. When the Heat didn’t have the cap space to bolster the back of their roster, LeBron left. There were other circumstances at play in both exits. But when you give LeBron what he needs, he tends to deliver.”
Unpause, back to OWL.
Carpe isn’t the Overwatch LeBron, I’m just going to get that out of the way. He’s not the greatest to ever touch a mouse and keyboard. But I want to call attention to a key word in both of those stories: “happy.”
Carpe isn’t a superstar because he’s obstinate, refuses to play nice with others, and demands that everything be built around him—we have no proof that he’s any of those things. He’s a superstar because we treat him like one, because he wields power like one, whether he actively sought to or not. When we ask if he’s “happy,” we’re acknowledging that he’s the kind of player worth holding onto at all costs, a player so undeniably talented that it’s up to the team to satisfy him. We ascribe him the level of value that we would any superstar in today’s NBA, and the way we talk about those players has been shaped by LeBron.
The Fusion confirmed this by building around him for the future, and of all the franchises in OWL, they’re among the ones that have put the most on the line. Fusion Arena is a massive, $50-million endeavor that just broke ground in the same complex as all of Philly’s major sports arenas, and you just know what face is going on it when it’s finished. They already told you:

It opens in 2021—don’t think they didn’t know what they were doing when they locked Carpe up until 2022.
Looking at the roster moves themselves, nearly every one seems geared to get the most out of the franchise player. Bringing in Fury, Ivy, and Alarm means that main support is Philly’s only role without a top Korean-language alternative, and KDG from Seoul gives them a Korean head coach. Many will point to SADO’s continuance as the only main tank on the roster as preference, and Alarm? An old teammate of Carpe’s, from those first BK Stars teams. One wonders whether a recommendation might have been in play when Fusion Uni picked up Alarm in 2018. The point is, three seasons is a long time in the Overwatch League, and the Fusion must have made it worth Carpe’s while for him to commit.
Again, none of this is to be taken as truth. It’s just free speculation. But the fact that we can have these conversations, that Carpe is the kind of player worth asking these questions about, worth betting the future of your very expensive franchise on—that’s what makes him a superstar.
And when Carpe gets his way, we get this:
