JD Gaming’s disappointing and short Golden Road at the League of Legends World Championships last month has forced the Chinese juggernauts to start a rebuilding process.
However, that rebuilding process will be without mid-laner Zhuo “Knight” Ding, who reports say will be joining Bilibili Gaming for the 2024 season.
JDG were defeated in the semifinals of the Worlds by eventual champions T1 and they have surprisingly opted to release Knight.
The organization confirmed his departure on Friday, December 1, via a tweet where they showed his highlight while appreciating his contribution to the organization’s history.
“Today, we bid farewell to Knight. As a cornerstone player in our last campaign, his highlight reel of outplays and the 3 titles in one year will remain forever in JDG’s history book.” the tweet read.
Knight’s departure is the second big departure from the JDG dominant roster of 2023 that did a clean sweep of both the Spring and Summer LPL splits, the first being Bai “369” Jia-Hao . Knight won the MVP after a 3-1 win over BLG at the Mid-Season Invitational, one of the iconic performances of this roster.
Last week, JDG CEO confirmed Kanavi, Ruler, and Missing had re-signed with the organization with a contract extension until 2025, but without Knight and 369 mentioned, JDG would not be fielding the same squad that dominated the LPL this year.
Knight will be playing in his eighth year in the top flight in that region, and it’s not looking like he will be leaving the competitive League anytime soon. The mid-laner spent less than a year at JDG after joining in early 2023, after spending over three years with Top Esports.
He won two splits and recorded a semifinal finish at Worlds 2020 while he was at TES. However, he left TES after they crashed out of Worlds 2022 outside of the top eight.
Daniel Ademiju Idowu
