The first round of the 2023 LCK playoffs has all ended with the duel between DK and HLE, and all the top four teams in this season's LCK playoffs have been released, and T1, GEN, KT, and HLE will compete for two places to advance to MSI in the next double-elimination tournament. DK, who lost today's match, can only end the spring tournament as a six-finalist, and the defending S10 champion team who appeared on the LCK stage in 2019 set a new league record in league history since advancing to LCK this season. This ending is very difficult for the team with three S-champions to accept, and they will also have to undergo more rigorous tests in the summer to have a chance to advance to S13.
Team DK, formerly known as DAMWON Gaming (DWG), won the LCK spot as a minor champion in early 2019, and quickly became one of the top LCK teams with a young and potential roster after the introduction of S8 champion coach Kim Jung-so, winning the spring final four and summer third place in its debut year, and eliminated Team KZ in the S9 Bubbling Tournament to complete the triple jump feat from the minor league to the World Finals within a year. Team DWG of the 2019 World Finals advanced from the qualifying round and beat the defending S8 champion IG Team in the group stage to advance as the top of Group D, but unfortunately lost 3-1 to Team G2 to stop the quarterfinals.
2020 was a pivotal year for Team DWG's transformational rise, bringing in Ghost players to the ADC position, topping the summer regular season with an astonishing winning percentage, and eventually sweeping DRX 3-0 to claim the team's first LCK League title in history. In the 2020 World Finals, DWG, as the No. 1 seed, showed its strong dominance, with the rhythm of the three core players of Canyon, ShowMaker and BeryL, crushed all opponents along the way, defeated DRX, G2, and SN successively, and won the 2020 World Finals championship with a record of 15-3, returning the Summoner's Cup for the LCK Division after three years.
In 2021, DWG team received investment from South Korea's Kia Motors Group, changed its name to DWG KIA (DK), and the last single player was changed from Nuguri to Khan, continuing its dominance of LCK, becoming the second LCK team to win the spring-summer double championship and three consecutive league championships after T1, especially defeating Faker's T1 in the summer finals 3:1. Unfortunately, in the MSI and the global finals, although the DK team reached the final twice on behalf of LCK, it lost to the LPL's RNG and EDG teams by a score of 2:3, becoming the first team in history to win two consecutive MSI+S matches.
After the end of S11, Team DK ushered in the largest squad reorganization in the history of the team, with Meritorious Assistant BeryL leaving, Khan retiring, and Ghost leaving the team. DK reorganized the team with champions Nakano Canyon and ShowMaker as the core, but it was difficult to restore its former glory. Neither of the spring and summer seasons reached the league final. S12 also lost to Team GEN in the quarterfinals. In the S13 season, the DK team reorganized again, bringing in Canna on the road and S12 champion Deft on the road, but DK, who had three champions, continued to run wildly on the road of decline, finishing only fourth in the league in the spring season, and was eliminated by the lower ranking HLE in the first round of the playoffs, setting the worst league result in the team's history.