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S1mple was the MVP of Starladder i-League Season 5 – a surprise to anyone who didn’t know grass was green or water was wet. He was miles ahead of the pack, with a 1.40 rating on HLTV – 0.17 ahead of second placed Snatchie.
An interesting Reddit post confirmed that the Ukrainian is statistically the best player of all time. Well, except for Get Right, funnily enough.
It’s easy to look at s1mple and call Na’Vi a one-man team, but the rest of his teammates actually turned up to play this time.
Granted, even s1mple himself admitted in an interview that Na’Vi needs to win a tournament with better opposition to really prove their worth, but you can only beat what’s in front of you.
Na’Vi certainly did that. NRG’s miracle run to the grand final came to a crashing end, resulting in a bit of a disappointing final. The American team can look back with pride on the rest of the tournament, but were badly outclassed in the final itself. They managed just eight rounds on Overpass and ones less on Mirage. Ethan was the only NRG player to put up a positive K/D ratio on Overpass. None of them did on Mirage.
Weirdly, s1mple didn’t put up the best numbers on either map, despite an overall rating of 1.47. That was the highest rating, of course, and he did pick up the most kills overall, but Na’Vi should be over the moon about three other players starting to pick up some slack.
Zeus is never going to set the world on fire with his fragging power, but even he stepped up his individual play on home soil. Perhaps it was a reaction to some of the criticism he has received online, we’ll probably never know, but he looked like a more rounded player during i-League.
The really exciting prospect for Na’Vi fans was marked improvement in Electonic’s performance. He showed signs of the form that got him a transfer in the first place. He seems to be properly gelling with the team now, stepping out of s1mple’s shadow a little.
I remember at least one lovely anti-eco spray transfer from the quarter-final against SK, and there were more moments like that in the tournament.
Being the other young talent on a team with the best player in the world must be tough. No matter what you do, there’s this other guy who outdoes you the following round. Get four Deagle one taps on an eco round?
S1mple gets four more in the next, and a knife kill to secure the ace. It must be dispiriting in a weird way if you don’t have the right mentality to deal with being the second best player on a team.
Electronic is showing signs of having exactly the right mentality now, though. Against NRG in the final, he got the most first kills on the server, leaving s1mple to do this thin once the dust had settled.
Having players who are willing and able to play around a guy like s1mple is integral to making a team like this work. If the reason for this change in Na’Vi’s fortunes is the improvement in Electronic’s performance, he should be applauded for his maturity. Even the best player in the world can win every game by himself, but Na’Vi seem to have finally worked out how work around him.
The truth is probably a little more complicated. Yes, Electronic has stepped his game up, as have his teammate s, but Zeus has been working out how to bring all the pieces together. Na’Vi have learned the lesson of events gone by, no longer leaving s1mple on a pistol during force buys.
The other four players have improved their only play, but also know when to let s1mple be s1mple. It’s a winning formula against teams who aren’t called Faze or Astralis, but the real test is still to come.