Ninjas in Pyjamas is the first-ever 'CS:GO' team to win a big event with a substitute
No Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team in history has won a premiere event with a stand-in player until Ninjas in Pyjamas took first place at StarSeries Season 2 on Sunday.
Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated G2 Esports in the StarSeries finals with Maikelele substituting for Pyth, who is out with an injury in his mouse hand. In the time since CS:GO released in 2012, no team has performed so well with a temporary stand-in player in a big tournament. Stand-ins rarely fit in as well as Maikelele did with the four other players and often don't have hours, days or weeks of practice with those players under their belt.
Maikelele previously played with NiP in late-2014 and early-2015, and was most recently playing with FaZe Clan as a back-up player.
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Throughout the five-day tournament, NiP defeated HellRaisers, Godsent, Astralis and Cloud9 to make it to the finals. Maikelele was a key player in every match with an ADR averaging in the 80s and consistently positive K/D ratings.
Maikelele had a fantastic play on the second map with the AWP, getting a quad-kill while defending bombsite B on the counter-terrorists side.
Pyth has been out since the start of ESL Pro League Season 4 in August, temporarily replaced by Disco Doplan who has returned to his team Epsilon Esports. At this point, there has been no update on when Pyth will be returning to the NiP line-up, so Maikelele may be sticking around for upcoming Pro League matches. Ninjas in Pyjamas faces Astralis and Na'Vi on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.
The team has done fairly well without Pyth and is currently sitting in second place in Pro League's European standings. Since the beginning of 2016 the team has mostly placed below fourth place in premiere events with few exceptions. A little bit of new blood on the roster seems to be turning that around, but whether it lasts is another question.
