The Bosnian star spoke about G2 winning Dallas and the challenges ahead.
G2 arrived for the $425,000 BLAST Premier Spring Final in London in a good mood as Nikola "NiKo" Kovač won their first trophy of the year earlier this month at IEM Dallas.
NiKo sat down with esports.gg during BLAST Premier Spring Final's media day on June 11 and reflected on their IEM Dallas campaign and what they must focus on to win more tournaments in the rest of the year.
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Winning IEM Dallas with Stewie2K
Nobody expected much from G2 at IEM Dallas as their in-game leader Rasmus "HooXi" Nielsen couldn't attend the event and the organization called up Jake "Stewie2K" Yip to stand in.
The North American had been away from top-tier Counter-Strike for over two years, but he held his own just fine in front of the home crowd and G2 walked away with a memorable victory. According to NiKo, G2 didn't make a lot of changes for IEM Dallas.
"For Dallas, probably what helped us a bit more is that we have a bit less pressure, we played a bit more free, didn't think about mistakes, and once we got to the arena the crowd was on our side" NiKo said. "There was nothing crazy different we have done, we kind of just snowballed through the event, and started getting better and better after each game."
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What does G2 can improve
Although G2 made some other deep runs in 2024, their best results before IEM Dallas were playing at the semifinals of both the PGL Copenhagen Major in March and the IEM Chengdu in April. In 2023, for example, the team won the prestigious IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne in the first eight months of the year.
Now that G2 and NiKo have lifted their first CS2 trophy, the expectation is that they do better throughout the year, starting with the BLAST Premier Spring Final. The Bosnian star stressed that even though communication isn't costing them tournaments, it can always be improved.
"Communication is something that can always be better, do it more calm and clean, it's something we have been working on all the time, and there's always room for improvement," NiKo said. "But it's definitely not the reason why we haven't won matches. It could maybe stabilize our game more or build more trust in each other."
G2's preparation to face Team Spirit and their superstar donk in the BLAST Premier Spring Final debut
G2 and NiKo will have to overcome quite an obstacle against Spirit as Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov still hasn't arrived for the BLAST Premier Spring Final, and head coach Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas will stand in for the match.
This means G2 will have to neutralize Spirit's superstar Danil "donk" Kryshkovets without the help of m0NESY. Even though this is quite a scary prospect, NiKo told esports.gg that they never focus on individual players during their preparation.
"I don't think we ever focused on star players ever since I came to G2," NiKo said. "We play what we like to play, we do what we think is best versus a certain team or playstyle."
G2 and Spirit will play today, June 12 at 11:30 a.m PT / 2:30 p.m PT / 8:30 p.m CEST.
