What if they weren’t self-sabotaging?

k0nfig’s retirement is what started this whole thought train off. That guy, at his peak, was an absolute must-watch. A swashbuckling lunatic with perfect first bullet aim playing at 4x speed who has absolutely no regard for your, or his own team’s, game plan, set-up, economy, or players. He is going to go into the site and fight you, and he’s going to win.

But what if he’s… not going to win?

That inconsistency plagued k0nfig for a long time - it’s the reason he only joined Astralis when they were rubbish, and NIP when they were absolutely [REDACTED] - and later on in his career, we started to realise why. He was clearly a little bit of a hothead and you can imagine how much him and MSL (a guy who loved his structure) would butt heads, and everyone remembers the knife in the back situation that would have had the poor IGL having kittens.

No wonder he went bald.

Then we later found out he wasn’t just unchained within the server, and it all kinda made sense. When we found out he was missing games because of a broken leg sustained by fighting a bouncer, I feel like we all let out a collective “Ohhhhhhh. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually”.

Data: HLTV.org

What if he had been more of a lover and not a fighter? What if he wasn’t on North for so long and moved to Astralis instead of Magisk? What if he could just channel his temper into something productive? What if he’d just listened to MSL a little bit?

Actually, maybe not on that last one.

It’s a shame because he did genuinely have several years where he was very good. In 2016/2017 and during and just after COVID, he was actually a very good player with some consistency. He wasn’t all potential, is what we mean. He had his moments.

He’s more Joe Cole than Balotelli, is what I mean.

The thing about k0nfig is that if he could just have held it together, he would have been the most electric player in the world. He was SO fun to watch, and when he was on it he did things with an AK47 that shouldn’t be possible. His career nosedive through his own self-sabotage impacted not only him, but us as viewers.

Party hard or hardly party?

Speaking of which, I’d like to bring up HEN1. I know, I know. You’re scoffing. “HEN1? Right next to k0nfig?” and yeah, sure, maybe you’re not as gifted with the vision as I am. Very few are. HEN1 was ridiculously gifted; the fastest hands in the West, capable of total soul reads and patient and explosive in equal measure.

He was a passive clutch star on FURIA and left to his own devices on Immortals, both very good teams. Immortals made a Major and a couple of other finals. Which brings me on to the point…

HEN1 fell into the Adriano/Ronaldo hole, it seems. Maybe not quite as much - he’s certainly not as fat as Adriano - but he did love to party, and he once missed the first map of a Grand Final because he was hungover. Allegedly.

He definitely missed it, and Immortals had to forfeit the map and lost the final. How many events did he screw up through his drinking? I believe it because I once worked on an event where he was fined for showing up over 15 minutes late to a game, and then decided he would be 14 minutes late to every map for the rest of the event.

Funny, but I couldn’t go home until the day was over. Don’t do this to me.

He was also supposedly removed from FURIA by request, which is the official line. Just like the official line on 9/11 is that Al Qaeda did it, or the official line on shapeshifting lizards is that the idea is ‘a ridiculous conspiracy theory’.

Essentially, what I’m getting at is that HEN1 was, once again, not kicked for his gameplay, and that the royal family are all lizards.

A truly frustrating player, because just like k0nfig, he was a wonderful player to watch. He was so, so, so fast, and Brazil always needs AWPers. They’ve had to outsource AWPing because of HEN1.

What is it about AWPers?

There are a few other AWPers who ruined their careers through sheer idiocy, lack of discipline, or ego. Mainly ego, especially in the case of Deko.

deko was meant to be the next best Russian AWPer, a player hyped in a region that has m0NESY, sh1ro, Jame, iDISBALANCE and WorldEdit and a whole host of others. By all accounts, he was, too. It might be bold to say he’s as good as any of those players (except iDISBALANCE during a full moon) when he can be arsed, but he genuinely could have been.

If you’ve watched him on a good day, you know what I mean.

His problem was simply that he was insane. Not in a good way, not in a bad way. He’s just got some sort of Counter-Strike-induced madness. His teammates would talk about how, some weeks, he would just decide not to AWP, which, while based, is not conducive to team cohesion.

I might be being a bit harsh – if you read his interviews or watch his stream, it’s clear he’s just angry and disillusioned. I’m not sure if he just hates CS or he’s not happy, but we hope he finds some peace in his retirement.

smooya was never as good as deko, but he would have had a clear niche as being a good AWPer from the UK. He was a tier two farmer who, at times, could play in tier one, and would probably have been a tier one player if anyone could stand being around him for longer. Unfortunately, he’s a total prick.

poizon, too, had a period in his career where he looked like he could be s1mple. Not like peak s1mple, but 2025 s1mple. That’s probably harsh; he was for a short period a top 10 AWPer in the world by my count, and looked set to be a permanent player at this level. Then it came out that he didn’t practice.

Not an AWPer, but…

oBo, man. Why did you do what you did?

We’ll get onto the LEGO game that ruined NACS later, but NA was dying way before then, and it’s partially because all of their good players are a bit crazy. oBo just retired and disappeared one day, and the rumours about why and what he’s up to are mind-blowing.

I don’t think we’ll ever truly know what’s going on in his mind, and perhaps that’s for the best. But NA could really, really do with someone as good as him.

He, for all the world, looked like someone who could be NA’s newest EliGE, or NAF, and carry them to the promised land (having a vaguely competent team for a bit). He looked like he could hang with the big dogs on Complexity, and would be good enough to not get Grim’d on Liquid.

What if they didn’t make bad decisions?

Another player NA could really have done with for the longest time is swag.

He was banned so long ago that the word swag was still being used, and not on the bags of cartoon robbers, either.

swag had the world at his feet as a teenager and looked set to dominate and be NA’s coldzera. Or at least like, I don’t know, Wicadia or something. Anything. Just not banned indefinitely.

The reason he gets in ahead of steel or DaZeD is because… well, we know exactly how good the other two were. steel was a good player and a great Counter-Strike mind, but wouldn’t have caused a massive seismic shift in the NA scene. DaZed wasn’t even that good then, and now is on his Onision arc.

Like, seriously. He’s either cosplaying as Onision (without the allegations) or that fitness YouTuber who did an exorbitant amount of ayahuasca and fried his brain. Weird guy.

swag, on the other hand, can’t even spell ayahuasca and, as such, stayed somewhat clean, apart from the whole match-fixing thing. He was very, very talented and just getting started.

NA could have had it all.

Instead, they had to import players like BnTeT, who was dubbed the Indonesian XANTARES. By me. Probably nobody else. He was a complete player.

By Asian standards, at least. He was good internationally, but he wasn’t a complete player.

If you looked at his numbers way back when, you’d see what looked like the best player in the world. He was doing ZywOo things to players who quite likely had day jobs, but he was still doing ZywOo things. This was back when Asian Counter-Strike was a bit of a joke, really, and he was meant to be the guiding light to bring them into the 21st century.

He got to play some tier one with TYLOO, eventually, and… well, he was good. Not amazing, but he was new to the level and he was trying to communicate with players who didn’t speak any of his languages.

BnTeT was fluent in English, which came in handy to communicate with the coach. Who could then communicate in Mandarin to the rest of the team.

It was a mess.

His decision to join a Chinese team, and then for some God forsaken reason in-game lead a team he couldn’t communicate with, completely killed his career. He ended up trying to resuscitate it on NRG, which is the equivalent of trying to quit smoking at Snoop Dogg’s house.

Actually, NRG were alright back then. He turned out to be a decent player, which really begs the question: how good could he have been if he hadn’t tried to speak English to Chinese players for a bit?

Source: ESL

What if they didn’t stick to their own?

tabseN turned down G2.

He turned down G2.

Why?

On one hand, we respect the loyalty, building a scene and all that, and it was nice to see him being a star on that team instead of just one of the lads on G2. But on the other, G2 needed an IGL who had a vague idea on what Counter-Strike actually was and wasn’t calling via ChatGPT prompts.

He probably could have gone and won some events and taken some trophies to show his grandkids. But noooooo, you had to stay on BIG forever, and trap Krimbo there as well.

And XANTARES, whose only international team was BIG. During COVID. He spent time on BIG and thought ‘f–ck this I’m going back to Turkey’, and now he hasn’t won anything either.

I maintain that if XANTARES could speak English, he’d have won a Major. We wasted his one international journey on tabseN and syrsoN. For crying out loud.

What if they weren’t actually just kinda weird and/or bad?

The first draft of this section just simply said D0cC. I thought that was enough.

D0cC had an insane amount of hype around him because he was ropzesque in FPL. He consistently put up numbers that even the Greeks had never heard of against the best players in the world in pugs, and just like ropz, he had to go to FACEIT HQ to prove his legitimacy.

He simply could not be this good.

He was a real human man, and not an AI, a woman hiding their identity or a blatant hacker like the reddit conspiracy theorists suggested.

But he wasn’t the best communicator, and there were rumours about his parents being disapproving, and he essentially never found a real team. Whether or not that was because he simply wasn’t as good as his FPL run showed, or if he was just too weird to be around, we don’t know.

He was probably weird. He’s so gifted.

A bit like EspiraNto, who played on a team with huNter- years ago and looked like he was at least as likely to be a top-tier player as him. He was not. Supposedly, he was also quite difficult to have as a teammate, but he seems to have also become much worse at the game.

That’s a bad mix.

He really looked like he would be as good as huNter-. I swear. I’m not delusional.

What if VALORANT never existed?

Ah, North America. If you hadn’t ruined yourself enough, Riot Games were there to ruin it for you.

VALORANT came and nuked the region, and while many of the players were unlikely to be complete world changers, Chaos were actually rolling tier 2 teams over and were among the most exciting NA projects at the time.

All five players from North America. Reliable playstyle. Talented youngsters. Hated by Brazilians (not relevant, but true). Soldiers and artists. They could have been America’s 3DMAX.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but 3DMAX are quite good. And unlike 3DMAX, there’s bigger teams who would want to sign good NA players.

leaf and Xeppaa are the obvious ones that are big ‘what if’ players from that team, but NA has never really found another RUSH, and Jonji - if you could stop him tilting - could have been that. vanity would be the best IGL in the region, probably. Citation needed.

They also lost Ethan, who was already sensational and had won tier one events, but he went to the dark side and probably did well over there.

I could look it up, but nobody cares how good you are at that game.

(Editor’s note: he was the first and only two-time world champion, once as a player and once as an IGL. He did more than ‘well’.)

Ethan and the Chaos guys could have been generational for NA. Instead, they’re pinning their hopes on cxzi, HexT and nicx. Great.

They could have had TenZ, guys. TenZ!

Never mind.

They weren’t the only ones to lose a player - EU lost Jamppi, who… alright, I can feel the barrel on my fingernails.

Source: Riot Games / Colin Young-Wolff

The biggest what if

DreamHack Stockholm 2018 North if MSL hadn’t used all his wishes on that one event.

For me, personally, I was CONVINCED D0cC was going to be the truth. Part of me still is. He’s a massive ‘what if’ because we never actually saw him against real competition in a real competition. We saw k0nfig for a bit. We saw BnTeT. We saw HEN1.

Yes, what they could do was impressive and they could have been even more, but D0cC was doing crazy, crazy things to the same players day in and day out and we never got to see him in a real environment.

Maybe that’s the wrong answer. But it’s my answer and I’m sticking with it.

D0cC. Never forget.