OG had taken Nathan “NBK-” Schmitt off the bench for today’s match against Heroic in the on-going ESL Pro League Season 13.
OG aimed to win against Heroic, who had a 3-0 standing in the league, but lost the series by 1-2. They now sport a 2-2 win-loss match record and will play FPX tomorrow.
The team has taken on the services of Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen as a stand-in, as he was previously benched by Heroic. But now that OG was slated to go against Heroic in the Electronic Sports League Pro League Season 13, they deemed that fielding Niko was a conflict of interest. So NBK was taken off the bench for this match.
NBK was the one who gathered the original CS:GO roster of OG in December 2019. He failed to bring his friends Nemanja "huNter-" Kovac and Nemanja “nexa” Isakovic into this roster, but managed to get OG to sign Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen. Aleksib was the former in-game leader of ENCE, so it was inevitable that conflict between him and NBK would arise. They disagreed on leadership roles and the team’s outlook towards gameplay. They were, however, able to resolve their differences.
OG benched NBK after the team’s dismal performance in 2020 and early 2021. The team failed to place higher than third in tournaments from December 2019 to September 2020. They fared better in the last quarter of 2020, where they tied for the first to third places in the BLAST Premier: Fall 2020 Regular Season.
But the team’s dissatisfaction with NBK continued. NBK cited disagreement “on how to consistently perform at the highest level” as the reason OG decided to sideline him. It's unsure whether or not he will continue to play in upcoming matches.
