The Dallas Mavericks weren’t the only people to lose a loveable, apparently overweight, Slov- ah, different Slov-country.

Banter denied.

The world of Counter-Strike also lost its favourite Eastern European son. Yes, we are aware that some of you guys in Eastern Europe don’t like being labeled as Eastern European. Our advice would simply be to not live in Eastern Europe. Please don’t unsubscribe.

GuardiaN has called it a day in CS, which is significant even if he hasn’t been on top since… well, if we’re being nice, 2021, and if we’re not, 2018. That’s because he’s been playing this game competitively since 2006 - this was his 19th year of competition, and he’s only 33.

He’s been doing this for over half his life, and he’s finally walking away. That’s not easy to do. We struggle to walk away after a loss at 4 in the morning when we’re just going to wake up and queue again. Imagine not waking up and queueing again.

That sounded dark. We don’t mean like that.

This is a man who has seven – yes, seven – top 20 awards in CSGO. One of those was a second place. He won seventeen LANs in his career, though notably, he retires as a king without his crown. No Major. Not even a Cologne or Katowice.

GuardiaN’s career is a Greek tragedy; at times he was the most feared AWPer in the world, and yet he had no #1s.

He was consistently on great teams, but was injured in one of his Major finals and… we won’t talk about the other.

He’s won lots of trophies, lots of accolades, but none of the ones that truly write your name in the history books. Bizarrely, GuardiaN might be forgotten to time as a nearly-man; despite his obvious skill, the fear his name instilled in his enemies, his aura.

Fortunately, there’s some things you can’t take away from him. Every single highlights video of CSGO ever has to have a clip of GuardiaN.

We’ll take any excuse to watch this.