G2 Perkz: 'I think we take the best of ones kind of wrongly. We prepare for the teams themselves instead of focusing on our own strategies.'

Day 3 of the Mid-Season Invitational saw the European representative G2 Esports go 1-1. Now 3-3, they are tied with China’s Team WE for the second place spot in the group stage. After a close loss to Team SoloMid and a near-perfect game against Flash Wolves, Yahoo Esports caught up with G2 mid laner Luka “PerkZ” Perković to talk about G2’s highs, lows, and where the team goes from here.

Take me through the final few minutes against Game 1. What was behind that risky call to go for the Nexus?

The call was 100 percent right. Actually, I made the call and the call was really good. It was just missed execution. We could have actually ended the game. There are so many ifs, but the call was correct and that’s the only thing that matters.

How did you recover so quickly to have such a dominant Game 2 against Flash Wolves?

It’s a best of one. So many things can happen in best-of-ones, like TSM’s early game against us. But they weren’t good enough to close the game out. It shouldn’t be that we are taken down and we can come back, it happens. We are happy with our performance. We are sad that we lost early game, but we are happy with how we came back.

There’s been a lot of talk from multiple teams and players that SKT are above every other team at this tournament. Does that affect your mindset or mentality going up against them?

I disagree. Everyone can win against everyone. We almost took a game off of SKT. One mistake less and maybe we’ll win next time. I still think everyone can win against everyone. SKT is obviously a little bit ahead than everyone else, but if they don’t play their best game, they can lose to anyone in the tournament too.

There’s also been a lot of talk of the difficulty in going from a dominant domestic performance to an international event like this. G2 Esports, TSM, and Flash Wolves, even Marines were all really dominant domestically but have been very inconsistent at MSI. Why do you think that is, and is there a difficulty in the transition from domestic to international?

I think a lot of the times the regions overall just aren’t good enough. TSM was struggling against C9. One more mistake and they lose that series. So C9 was a good team and everyone else was pretty bad in NA.

Same for EU, we didn’t have a lot of competition. Same for Flash Wolves, they had zero competition in the LMS. And World Elite ran through the gauntlet. It comes down to how hard you work and what you want to achieve against the best teams in the world, which is what everyone in the top of their region wants to do. For us, I think we take the best of ones kind of wrongly. We prepare for the teams themselves instead of focusing on our own strategies. For example, CLG was a really strong best-of-one team. They could cheese with Sol and Caitlyn and stuff to get to the best-of-fives where they could really show what they had.

Is that one of the reasons why you think the GIGABYTE Marines have had some success here? They’ve definitely had the attitude that they prepare for themselves more than they prepare specifically for their opponents.

Yeah, I kind of agree. They play the same champs almost every game. But they’re also good at best-of-five. They could have won against TSM really easily, Game 4 was a free win but they didn’t get it. But Marines are a good team. I wouldn’t underestimate them, especially if they make it to a best-of-five.

Lastly, you have naturally become a lightning rod of criticism directed at G2 for better or for worse. Is that something you now embrace, or something you would like to shed?

Well. *laughs* I don’t know how to answer this really. Since first split I’ve been the face of G2, kind of, so everything I say or do reflects on G2. I’m fine with that. I overspoke last year, or maybe was joking too much. People took it too seriously. I’m fine with being a more outspoken person. I have the skills and confidence to back it up. I don’t really care what the community thinks. It doesn’t matter. I will just keep saying what I think.

Emily Rand’s love of the 2013 KT Rolster Bullets will never die. You can follow her on Twitter.