Team Spirit are your DreamLeague Season 21 Champions!

The final pitstop before The Internationals 2023, DreamLeague Season 21, has reached its climax as Team Spirit triumphed over their adversaries to be crowned champions.

The Grand Finals series was a rematch of the upper bracket finals. However, Shopify Rebellion couldn’t avenge their upper bracket finals defeat.

Team Spirit’s Journey 

After their marvelous performance at the Riyadh Masters 2023, Team Spirit were the favourites to win DreamLeague Season 21.

At DreamLeague Season 21, the team performed at a level similar to their previous run at The Internationals 2021.

The team secured the top seed in their groups with four wins and one tie.

Team Spirit Group Stage Records. Credits: Liquipedia

Their group stage results earned them a place in the upper brackets semi-finals against Tundra Esports.

Eclipsing Topias "Topson" Taavitsainen’s performance for Tundra Esport, Spirit took the series 2-0.

In the upper bracket finals, they met the grand final contenders, Shopify Rebellion, for the first time. They took the series 2-1 and advanced to the grand finals.

Grand Finals

In the grand finals, they met Shopify Rebellion again. Team Spirit went on to dominate the grand final series against them.

In game 1, Spirit made a daunting comeback with Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk’s safelane Phantom Lancer.

TS dominated the game with a well-thought-out draft in game 2.

In game 3, playing a carefully coordinated game, TS's draft came online much faster than SR expected. The team capitalised on their opportunity and took the game.

With a 3-0 clean sweep, Team Spirit emerged as the champions of the Dreamleague Season 21.

Their DreamLeague victory became the second consecutive tournament win on their road to The Internationals 2023.

Quick Stats 

In the tournament, Team Spirit often drafted three heroes as their support.

Team Spirit's Most Successful Heroes in DreamLeague Season 21. Credits: Dotabuff

Instead of going for meta picks, they chose to play with their comfort heroes at DreamLeague.

Enchantress, Dark Willow and Skywrath Mage are the heroes frequently picked by them. In their hands, both Enchantress and Dark Willow had a solid 75.00% win rate in eight matches.

Skywrath Mage had the same number of matches but had a lower 62.50% win rate.

With their DreamLeague victory, the team is at their best form ahead of The Internationals 2023.

Shopify Rebellion’s Journey

Shopify Rebellion Group Stage Records. Credits: Liquipedia

Unlike their opponents, Shopify Rebellion was a dark horse in the tournament.

The team, composed of star players and veterans, made a lot of deep runs at LANs this season, but they were unsuccessful in closing out a tournament.

The team dominated the three tours of the North American region in the 2022-2023 DPC Season.

In DreamLeague Season 21, they came close to lifting their first trophy but couldn’t defeat Team Spirit, who stood in their way twice.

Shopify Rebellion Stats

Compared to their opponents, Shopify Rebellion had a different approach in their tournament run.

The team also played Enchantress. Despite having the same number of matches, Shopify had less success with the hero, as they only had a 62.50% win rate.

Shopify’s drafted Vengeful Spirit the most at the tournament. In 11 matches, the team had a 63.64% win rate with the hero.

The team had more success with the hero compared to other teams at the tournament.

The second most-played hero of the team is Shadow Demon. Although SR played the hero in 9 matches, they only had a 44.44% win rate.

Shopify’s unexpected run at DreamLeague brought some attention back to the NA region ahead of The Internationals 2023.

The Future

The International 2023
Credits: Valve

As the DreamLeague Season 21 draws its curtains, the only tournament left is the prestigious International 2023.

Many top teams in the scene had shown their cracks in the DreamLeague tournament.

Nevertheless, as The International approaches, teams around the world are headed to Seattle to get their names immortalized.

Valve is trying various new approaches to attract fans back to Dota 2 as The Internationals is on the horizon.

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