Image: Team Spirit
With this victory, Team Spirit have staked their claim as the best CS2 team in the world right now.
Team Spirit have been crowned champions of the Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) BLAST Premier Spring Finals 2024 after they defeated 
Natus Vincere (Na’Vi), 3-1, in the grand finals on Sunday (16 June).
This marks Spirit's second championship this year after Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2024 back in February, which kickstarted their meteoric rise to the top of the CS2 scene.
With this latest victory, Spirit claimed the grand prize of $200,000 out of the tournament’s $425,000 prize pool. Meanwhile, Na'Vi settled for a second place finish and $85,000 in consolation.
Spirit and Na’Vi both had dominant runs through the Group Stage and Playoffs en route to their clash in the grand finals.
In the Group Stage, Na’Vi swept Astralis, 2-0, and defeated FaZe Clan, 2-1, to claim the top seed of Group A and a direct semifinals berth in the Playoffs. Meanwhile, Spirit topped Group B by defeating G2 Esports, 2-1, and sweeping Virtus.pro, 2-0.
The first semifinals match saw Spirit take on Team Vitality, who advanced out of the quarterfinals after defeating FaZe Clan. While Vitality won the first map of that series, Spirit pulled off a reverse sweep to become the first team in the grand finals.
On the other side of the bracket, Na’Vi were matched against Virtus.pro, who were coming off a sweep over Astralis. Na’Vi punched their ticket to the grand finals with a sound 2-0 sweep where they held Virtus.pro to single-digit round wins in both maps.
Spirit dominate Na'Vi to claim BLAST Premier Spring championship
Despite being the reigning CS2 Major champions, Na’Vi entered the grand finals as the underdogs. Spirit have won all three matchups they’ve had against Na’Vi so far this year, which included a four-map win streak heading into this latest clash.
Spirit would extend that map win streak over Na'Vi to six after they dominated the first two games of the grand finals.
In game one at Ancient, Spirit came out swinging by winning the first six rounds on the T side before finishing the first half up 10-2. Na'Vi then showed signs of life in the second half to cut their deficit down to 9-11, though Spirit were quick to shut the door and claim their first map of the series with a 13-9 score.
Myroslaw “
zont1x" Plakhotja led the way for Spirit in game one with 20 kills and three assists on 11 deaths. The team's superstar, Danil “
Donk” Kryshkovets also notched 19 kills and four assists on 11 deaths.
Game two at Dust II saw Spirit on the CT side get off to another hot start and win the first five rounds, though Na'Vi were able to keep things close at 7-5 by halftime. Na'Vi once again rallied in the second half and managed to tie things up at 9-9 before Spirit once again locked things down to win the map, 13-9, and claim a commanding 2-0 series lead.
Donk and Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov were the top fraggers in game two, racking up 22 kills and six assists apiece. Sh1ro notably had 12 deaths while donk had 16.
Na'Vi were determined not to go down without a fight, however, as they roared back to life to win game three at Mirage. They rattled off an incredible nine-round streak to start the map on the CT side to go up 10-2 heading into the second half. Spirit only managed to win two more rounds before Na'Vi claimed Mirage, 13-4.
Igor “w0nderful” Zhdanov topped the charts in game three with 19 kills and two assists on eight deaths. Na'Vi captain 
Aleksi “aleksib” Virolainen notably went deathless and had 10 kills in the first nine rounds of the map before finishing with 14 kills, one assist, and six deaths.
The final map of the grand finals at Nuke began with Na'Vi on the T side winning the three of the first four rounds before Spirit started pulling away to lead 7-3 by round 10. However, Na'Vi scored crucial back-to-back rounds to stay within reach of Spirit at 7-5 by halftime.
Spirit then locked in after the side switch, winning the first three rounds of the second half. While Na'Vi showed signs of life by winning round 16, Spirit could not be denied as they went on another three-round streak to close out the map at 13-6 and claim the BLAST Premier Spring Finals 2024 championship.
Zont1x and donk shined once again as Spirit clinched the championship. Zont1x had 20 kills and three assists while donk had 19 kills and four assists, with both players also having 11 deaths.
