Spinx on joining Vitality: "It wasn't an easy decision, all the ENCE guys are really good friends of mine"

Fresh off his move from ENCE to Vitality, Lotan "⁠Spinx⁠" Giladi discusses the motivation behind the change as he heads into his debut with the new team at BLAST Premier Fall Groups.

In one of the most high-profile moves of the summer off-season, Vitality swooped in to upgrade their firepower following a disappointing first half to 2022, as they replaced long-time member Kévin "⁠misutaaa⁠" Rabier with 21-year-old star rifler Spinx.

The Israeli player had made his name in a year-and-a-half-long stint with ENCE, now being touted as one of the best riflers of 2022 so far following a run that saw the Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer-led squad go on several deep runs in the first half of the year.

We had the chance to talk to Spinx and ask him about why he decided to make the move in a video interview from Copenhagen, where the new Vitality are about to play their debut with the new signing during the three-phase BLAST Premier Fall Groups event.

Spinx explained why he said yes to the Vitality offer despite ENCE having had better results in the first half of the season, and explored differences between the two teams and their in-game leaders, Snappi and Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire.

You can watch the interview in the video above or see the full transcript below:

Spinx, this is a new look for you. How are you getting used to that?

I guess normal, right? I'm not doing anything special, just getting into this new team, new organization.

Tell me about this decision to leave ENCE. You've had quite a big history with the guys, a year and a half, and leaving all of that behind. How difficult was it to make that decision?

It definitely wasn't an easy decision when I found out Vitality were interested. It wasn't like "I want to go, I want to go," but after some thinking I decided that I'd prefer to go. Yeah, it wasn't an easy decision, all the ENCE guys are really good friends of mine, a lot of good memories, but this is it I guess, right? Now I have a new team, new people to meet, new friends, and a new organization. So far it's been good and I hope it will keep going good.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that ENCE have had a better year than Vitality, so can you elaborate on why you made the jump?

There were some factors, but one of them was that Vitality have a BLAST partnership, which is super important for CS:GO overall. They have players like ZywOo, and we all know ZywOo, right? Every international team would want him. Of course, they have a lot of really, really experienced players, and I thought it would be good for me.

Do you see this team as a better chance to grab the titles? That's something that ENCE obviously wasn't able to do even though you got pretty close a couple of times - was that the biggest driving factor?

Yeah, I just thought to myself that it would be a better chance to win a trophy. That's the most important thing, after all.

Does it also come with a bigger paycheck?

Hmm... I don't want to talk about it (laughs).

Fair enough, fair enough. How much time have you had to catch up? You guys had a break I'm sure, so how quickly were you able to get back into things?

After the player break we have a six days bootcamp in France and after it we had a bit of pracc days back home, and that's it.

How are you getting used to the team so far?

It's definitely new, I don't think moving into a new team is easy. You have different people, a different atmosphere, also different roles and a lot of stuff, but I think I'm doing pretty fine.

apEX said the roles are perfect now in the team. Has it been that easy to fit in in terms of positions on the map and stuff like that?

It depends on the map, but on most of the maps, yeah, I have mostly my roles. Some maps, no, and it's completely fine, I need to learn new roles, that's it.

What about from a system standpoint and from the way apEX calls compared to Snappi, for example? What kind of differences do you see between the two teams? Is there something that you've had to get used to?

I think with Snappi we had a lot of calling from spawn, kinda. We knew what the wanted to achieve in this round, a B split or whatever. With apEX it's a bit different, you can start the round, but the round can end in so many ways.

We're at BLAST, where you guys have quite the chance to play a lot of different teams. What is it that you're trying to achieve in your debut?

Overall, definitely winning a tournament. I don't have a set timeline for this, but definitely winning a tournament, go deep in every tournament we can, go to playoffs, playing in front of crowd, qualifying to the Major, do good in the Major and... Yeah, just go deep in every tournament and maybe win some.

What about here specifically, your first tournament together - do you have high expectations or are you taking things slow?

I don't think we have any expectations. We know that everyone has some different roles, we need to get used to it, they have a different player. It's the first tournament, it could go really good because sometimes you have a honeymoon, but it can go kinda bad, as well. It's fine, I think we'll just do our best and learn from the mistakes.