EliGE & NAF make HLTV's Top 30

The HLTV Award Show 2023 has come and gone, but two of North America's best players earned some honorable mentions as they just missed out on reaching the prestigious HLTV Top 20 Player of the Year award honors.

While both Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski and Keith "NAF" Markovic did not make it onto the Top 20, they were ranked within the Top 30 players of the year. The former Liquid teammates both had individually excellent years with EliGE really improving towards the end of 2023 following the introduction of Counter-Strike 2.

NAF, who had earned Top 20 players honors in 2018, 2019, and 2021, also had a fairly consistent year despite the number of roster changes, position changes, and IGL changes. HLTV puts him as the 30th best player in the world for 2023 thanks to a Top 8 finish at the 2023 BLAST.tv Paris Major as well as his 1.11 HLTV Rating, 78.3 ADR, and 0.95 Impact Rating in the past year against all opponents.

EliGE had a different story as his performances towards the end of his time on Liquid and in CS:GO were already pretty decent. Prior to the new release of the game, he posted a 1.12 HLTV Rating, 79.2 ADR, and a 1.12 Impact Rating. Following the release of CS2, his form dramatically improved as he put up a 1.18 HLTV Rating, 85.2 ADR, and a 1.28 Impact Rating. Additionally, he helped push Complexity to some of their best LAN results in years in the way of a Top 4 Finish at BLAST Fall Final and a Finals appearance at IEM Sydney.

Both North American players have a long history of being recognized as some of the best in the world. With Liquid appearing to finally settle down a superstar roster and EliGE getting ingrained with Complexity, it's possible we could see these in the mix once again for HLTV's Top 20 Players of the Year in 2024.

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