Iceberg: “Team Spirit is the organization that gave me the push I needed to grow as a player.”

His superpower is that he can easily let go of a moment, a screw-up that happened. He understands that life goes on, continues, and he doesn’t get stuck in one place. And he also has this determination. I mean, for a very, very long time, he painstakingly wanted to sign Korb3n, and he did. That thought haunted him for maybe a year or even longer, and he never let it go. He always kept that thought in mind and tried to negotiate with him at that moment. He understood that specifically, when we were talking to him, he couldn’t get Korb3n, but the time came, and he achieved his goal. Determination.

And, of course, he could easily let certain mistakes slide, chalk them up to something. And I think that’s his strength—that, first of all, he was very immersed in the teams. It didn’t matter which ones: Counter-Strike 2, Dota—well, Dota at that time. He was fully immersed. I mean, he acted as an SEO, but sometimes it seemed like he was a manager, a nanny—he could do everything. That’s the kind of person Nikita is.

What did my time at Team Spirit give me as a person? Wisdom. A huge number of mistakes I made at Team Spirit. And, as Nikita once told me, the best apology—and I had this habit—was just to say “I’m sorry.” He said, “The best apology is to never do it again.” I remember that so well and clearly, too. And so I tried not to make the same mistakes over and over. And, of course, combined with the everyday foolishness that was inherent in me at the time.

Now, in many ways, Team Spirit is the organization that gave me the push toward self-development, not just in Dota, but outside of Dota. Because, as I mentioned earlier, Rusia helped me a lot there, even with something as simple as books. Nikita and I would constantly discuss things, which led to a huge number of insights that I sometimes still recall even now, nearly 10 years later. Team Spirit is the organization that not only gave me a foundation but, in essence, helped me discover myself and my potential.

How do I see Team Spirit in the next 10 years? It’s very hard to say, of course, because technology is advancing so very, very quickly right now—at an exponential rate. I’ll be rooting for this team wholeheartedly, because, as I’ve already said, they’ve given me so much, and I don’t have the right to root for any other team like that.