jL: "I want to ask zont1x: Are we still that comfortable?"

jL addressed the emotions behind finally taking down Spirit, as well as the heartbreak of losing at IEM Cologne.

Natus Vincere have bounced back from the disappointment of their recent IEM Cologne grand final defeat in style at ESL Pro League, sweeping through the competition with a perfect 8-0 map record thus far.

Not only do the European combine look poised to reclaim their throne as the No. 1 team in the world, they also put a scary team to bed in the form of Spirit to reach the semi-finals in Malta, breaking an 0-4 series streak against the Russians.

Fresh from an MVP performance against Spirit, Justinas "⁠jL⁠" Lekavicius spoke to HLTV to tell us how they managed to secure a comfortable win, what the result meant for him and his team, how they bounced back from the heartbreak in Cologne.

If you cannot see the SoundCloud embed above, listen to the interview here.

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Congratulations. What are your thoughts after that series?

Thank you. It feels amazing to finally beat Spirit, and not lose a single map, which was amazing. I feel like they made a little mistake by picking Dust2, because it's not our weak map. They for sure caught us by surprise, but it's not like it takes a lot of time to prepare a map for our team, and we knew they were going to hit B a lot, which they did. We just countered them there. Yeah, it was a good map from us.

What made you think they were going to hit B so much? Because watching it was a bit surprising, seeing a team with players like sh1ro and donk go to the B site so much. You'd think they want to spread it out more, give those players time to work.

I don't know actually, maybe they were trusting their strategies, maybe they thought B site was the weak site, which it is not. For any future teams, don't come there. I like to live a simple life, and if you do come, it's going to be a different talk.

You were pretty fired up in that match, there was a little flipping of the bird over to Spirit at one point. Was that just jL being jL, or was there a little bit of extra spice?

For sure there was a little bit of extra spice. I feel like this team has beaten us like 25 times, a BO5 final was one of them, and there were a lot of emotions built up. Then I read an interview where zont1x felt like we were a comfortable opponent for them. I want to ask him again, are we still that comfortable? Of course he's going to say, 'Yeah we played under pressure' or, 'It was just an unlucky day', but trust me, this result is going to keep repeating every time we face Spirit.

What did you change up? Because like you say, you had a bad record previously, now you've got that monkey off your back as it were. What did you change to allow you to be so comfortable this time around?

It's not like they're playing some amazing CS or very advanced CS, it's not like that, they are playing very simple. Fake A and go B, take control and go to the other site, it's very simple, you just have to understand it and have counters ready for it. They do shoot hard and if you don't have a crossfire, or a plan made for what they do, you are going to suffer a loss in that round. So that's what we tried to do, and we did it quite well.

Just to go back a little bit before Pro League, IEM Cologne was a bit of a heartbreak for you. Can you explain to me what it was like playing in Cologne and losing in the grand final?

The tournament itself was probably one of the best tournaments I have ever played in my life. Of course the Copenhagen Major would be in the No. 1 position, just because we won it and it was super important for our development as a team, but Cologne was just so beautiful. The presentation, the aura, the arena, the level of teams we played, it was just an amazing tournament to look back on. It could have been ours, it could have been 3-0, 3-1, 3-2, it doesn't matter. We lost, so we take the experience and move forward.

Did that add a little bit of extra fire in your belly? Because at this tournament, in terms of rating, it's one of the best you have ever played in your career. Did it give you any extra fire having that disappointment at Cologne?

Yes. It was a lot of disappointment in Cologne, I had to take a few days break. Well, not like a few days' break, but it was very painful for me to play CS afterward, so I tried to spend a lot of time with my friends, my family, and my fiancée. I tried to take it as a learning experience, stop living in the what ifs. 'What if I clutched that round?' 'What if I had a better performance?'. Instead of saying 'what if', I took it on the chin and tried to work as much as I could and come back stronger.

Seems like it went pretty well.

Thank you (smiles).

Was it important to have a performance like this at Pro League for you as a team? Because you lost the No. 1 spot to Vitality with the loss in Cologne, whereas now it feels like you are firmly putting yourselves back up there as the No. 1 team.

I do feel like we're the No. 1 team. Not by a huge margin, but it does feel like we have a lot of consistency and we don't really need a lot of individuals to show up for us to win the game. It's more of a team effort, even if a good player of ours is suffering a bad day, there are other people to lift them up and do the work. It's a nice environment to play in, I think we have really good team structure and gameplay.