Was NAVI's Major win a fluke? Banks says "No"
April saw the culmination of the first-ever CS2 Major, the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, as well as an unexpected winner - NAVI.
The Ukrainian organisation collected their second Major trophy after a hard-fought final against FaZe, the team that has impressed as the best thus far since the release of the newest iteration of Counter-Strike.
However, as with many other Major winners in the past, such as Gambit, Cloud9, or Virtus.pro, people have already questioned whether NAVI's victory in Copenhagen was a fluke.
We spoke to Banks to get his thoughts on whether or not the Aleksib-lead team can repeat this success in the future.
"NAVI levelled up over the event"
Do you see NAVI’s Major win as being a fluke similar to Cloud9’s or VP's?
"I don’t think we can see this one being a fluke when you look at the bracket across that Major overall, people can argue about the teams they faced but they beat G2 and FaZe across very hard games without crumbling.
This NAVI with these exact five players has previously crumbled in the closer games or the high-pressure games. If we think back to fall finals when Complexity eliminated them it was a game where they were losing two or three vs five situations a lot.
I think B1ad3 has always said it best about his system and how he wants NAVI to play is that time is something that they will need, he himself didn’t think they were ready to win it but they proved themselves, believed in each other and stepped up at the right time.
They even came back in the third map of the grand final after being destroyed 13-2 on Mirage."
Photo: Michal KonkolHow would you categorise their Major win then?
"I would say it is NAVI levelling up throughout the tournament, having each other's backs and believing they could do it, they never gave up.
I won’t say this is the start of a NAVI era or that they will go on to win the next three or four tournaments they attend but it proves why they are still a top team without s1mple being there and something is working out for them that they will continue to work on."
Can they recreate the success at other tournaments with harder brackets like having to face Spirit, FaZe, or Vitality earlier in the competition?
"They had a good game vs Spirit in the groups, they could have lost 2-0 but they had chances to win it 2-1, if they had been on the other side of the bracket and faced Spirit first game then yeah, we could be looking at a different story, but that isn’t what happened."
It’s been a while since they faced Vitality so it's hard to comment on that but I think a lot of people are just overlooking NAVI because they don’t have s1mple or a straight-up star like donk, ZywOo, or m0nes.
I am just excited to see what they can do now with this added confidence going into future tournaments.
Photo: Stephanie LindgrenDo you think there’s a risk of the success coming too soon for them and raising expectations too much as a result?
This happens all the time, I would not call it a risk, I would call it something every championship-winning team has to look at, Spirit in Katowice, Vitality when mezii first joined and they won back-to-back tournaments.
Expectations are always raised as a result of success, now NAVI have to deal with the pressures of this and the expectations themselves.
You have always had a lot of faith in this NAVI team, what do you see as it’s biggest strengths?
I think my faith always came from B1ad3. When you speak to him and you see how he thinks about the game he is always honest and smart with his responses and the situation he is dealing with.
With that in mind, the biggest strength right now is B1ad3, his system, and how Aleksib is growing and developing during this. It makes the rest of this year very exciting for them and their potential.