NBK: ''I’m more in the scenario where winning is a standard. That’s what has been my whole career.''
Following their victory over Evil Geniuses at BLAST Premier, the legend NBK spoke with GGRecon.
Nathan, congratulations on qualifying for the Spring Finals for the Blast Series. I need you to be honest with me right now. It was the beard wasn’t it? It just had to go otherwise it wasn’t going to happen.
Yeah, I think we know that I don’t do the deagle or anything like this. It’s just I guess don’t leave me at 2:30 in the morning with razor blades or something like this. I just wanted a change and regardless of that I was feeling good so I’m just happy we got a win again.
I mean, it did look like happy was just coming into you. Semmler was casting the play. I’m sure you’re going to go back and listen to that clip again. It seemed like you are the reincarnation of the glory of the French scene again. And you know what, you’ve gone forward. G2 is going to be up next for you. But first I have to ask something. It’s got to be feeling a little bit good qualifying where Vitality couldn’t.
I mean yeah, I guess there’s the part of that. They had a very very tough group as well, so you have to take that away. NaVi played us and smashed us as well 10 days ago. So yeah it obviously feels good and it feels great for having the 3 guys from G2. And me qualifying for French scene, it’s obviously for us, like we can make it work as well.
I also wanted to ask even if it isn’t like a big major final for $250,000 event or anything. It’s got to kind of feel nice for you being able to go up against another French team primarily for the finals of this event as well. I mean, it’s been so long since we could even think of saying 2 teams with French players could be in the finals.
That’s true. I think we see the same way as them in the sense that this is the qualifying process and the big final is going to be later on. But for us as a team, it’s a big win regardless because Blast’s qualifying is a big objective in terms, that we can prove something. That we’re good. That we’re not just here to be meat for other people. That was our main thing and that’s what we are focusing on. Any team that’s playing against us. It doesn’t really matter who we play. The focus is on us and being as good as possible right now.
My quick question about the game as well is that, unfortunately, it seemed like both maps that were picked by the other team were complete stomps the other way. I don’t know how that happens. I wonder if you do?
There was a lot of things that were unusual for us in trainings since we didn’t trust each other like a thousand percent. When we came on Mirage, we had much more fun, we were much more relaxed. We were trusting each other and following the calls, all of that. And it just worked good. It’s stupid to say but it’s as simple as it is. Follow the calls, make everything right, trust each other, and then everything works much better for us.
On Mirage, it did seem a little bit like Evil Geniuses got a bit over-confident. But you guys have looked stunning so far, in terms of having an actual solid map pool, even if it is shaky sometimes when you pick Train. And in terms of actually being able to make rookies like mantuu really come to shine. It looked like a completely different OG than what we have seen so far and the promises there. What does it mean to you to be able to show it to the world, that hey, your project is actually working?
That was the objective. To me, I’m more in the scenario where winning is a standard. That’s what has been my whole career. I don’t wanna see us like oh we just gonna pass groups, we just gonna make it, like we just gonna arrive at the major. I don’t give a fu*k about this. This is not my goal. Now obviously we are realistic in the sense that we have steps, we have things to do just to get there. And especially to be stable there. To me, winning has to be a standard. Because if you don’t aim for that then you can’t do anything pretty much. We are putting everything in place for this to happen. That’s pretty much it.
Image via BLAST.
