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It started with a tweet. It’s not uncommon for professional players (or coaches, in this case) to tweet out jokes about playing a champion in exchange for an absurdly high amount of retweets.
20000 Retweets for a teemo pick tomorrow. :D
— Andy Dinh (@TSMReginald) July 31, 2016
It’s happened before in Europe, but no teams followed through with their promises. When Andy “Reginald” Dinh, the owner of Team SoloMid tweeted this out, people went insane. TSM was already 16-1 and their last match was against NRG esports, a team they didn’t have trouble with before. Why not pick Teemo against them as a joke?
After the tweet hit 20,000 retweets, panic ensued. Nobody on TSM wanted to actually play him in competitive.
So..... who's going to play Teemo?
— Vincent (@Biofrostlol) July 31, 2016
Goodnight world. Waking up early to theorycraft the best Teemo build possible, wish me luck.
— Søren Bjerg (@Bjergsen) July 31, 2016
wtf ANDY WHAT HAVE U DONE https://t.co/KVY5nfIjrH
— Yiliang Peng (@TSMDoublelift) July 31, 2016
Everyone on the team was pretty nervous and they didn’t want to play the yordle. Except Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell.
Im ready to bust it out https://t.co/HNJL8XxZvV
— Kevin (@lolHauntzer) July 31, 2016
Ask and you shall receive! Hauntzer played Teemo top in game two against NRG Esports on Sunday and it was awful. He ended the game 1/5/1 and gave first blood to the enemy top-laner.
That’s not too horrible considering that he had no practice on him.
Disappointed in @lolHauntzer performance. He had 0 games on teemo this week in solo queue . We need to have a talk after this series.
— Andy Dinh (@TSMReginald) July 31, 2016
He was less than pleased after the series.
Wow Teemo SUCKS
— Kevin (@lolHauntzer) July 31, 2016
Reginald was also (jokingly) unhappy with Hauntzer’s performance.
Celebrating our teemo game ! Hauntzer sucks. Demoted to gastly. pic.twitter.com/LP0E81zZ6F
— Andy Dinh (@TSMReginald) August 1, 2016
In the end, TSM did reign victorious over NRG, taking the series 2-1. In the 3rd game, Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng actually scored his 1,000th career kill right before TSM took the enemy nexus.
Some say that the Teemo pick was a trick to force a game three and allow Doublelift to grab his 1,000th kill. Some say Reginald is just a troll and TSM likes to have fun. We’ll never know the truth, but hey, at least the Teemo game was entertaining!
You can watch the VOD of the match below if you want to see how not to play Teemo.