Marathon professional League of Legends game finishes with absolutely bonkers ending

It’s been a tumultuous season for first-year North American League of Legends team Echo Fox. Started up by ex-NBA player Rick Fox in December, the team started the season with a win before losing seven games in a row as multiple star players missed time due to visa issues. Echo Fox’s goal soon moved away from making the playoffs to just staying in the league and avoiding relegation.

When mid laner Froggen and top laner KFO returned in Week 5, so too did Echo Fox’s ability to win games. The team won four games in a row, climbing back up the standings and entering Saturday’s first Week 8 matchup against Dignitas at 5-9 and in a fight for seventh place (and safety from the relegation tournament).

Dignitas is another team fighting to stay away from relegation, entering Saturday with a 4-10 record. So, it’s safe to say this game, the last in a long Saturday of games, wasn’t exactly high on anyone’s radar.

Naturally, it was absolutely bananas. You can watch the whole game here if you really want, but in the interest of time I suggest you watch the last few minutes, which I’ve embedded below.

League of Legends games usually take between 30-45 minutes. Fifty-four minutes in, Dignitas held a kill lead of 8-1, making it a long and low-scoring game, and a gold lead of seven thousand -- sizable, but not out of reach. Echo Fox was mostly able to stay in the game because mid laner Froggen and marksman Keith were able to farm minions at extraordinarily high rates, keeping the gold deficit relatively close even with only one kill to the team’s name.

At 56 minutes, Echo Fox lost a fight 2-1, giving Dignitas an opening to pick up Baron. At this point, two Echo Fox inhibitors were down, swinging the odds heavily in Dignitas’s favor.

And then, Dignitas continually marched into Echo Fox’s base, and Echo Fox continually held them off by winning small fights, extending the game. And then everything erupted.

Just seriously, watch the last few minutes of this game.

At the very end, Dignitas held off what looked like the final push from Echo Fox, killing multiple members and saving its own base. As Dignitas’ team marched off across the map to Echo Fox’s base, however, two Echo Fox members hid in the jungle and stayed behind. When Dignitas left to try and win the game, the Echo Fox players snuck into the base and won first.

Look at the gold chart to see just how far behind Echo Fox was all game:

Rick Fox was pumped:

Echo Fox’s players couldn’t believe it either:

Echo Fox mid laner Froggen ended up setting the world League of Legends creep score record in a professional game, with an astonishing 764 minions farmed. The previous record was 726, set by former CJ Entus mid laner Coco in a 79-minute game in 2015. Fox marksman Keith also bested that record, with 738 in the game. For reference, an excellent farming rate is 10 per minute ... so for a 67-minute game, 670 would have been a very good mark.

Froggen also dealt over a million damage, an astonishing figure.

What a game.