Pros and Protégés round out Dust2.us' Team of the Month for June 2024

Dust2.us has returned once again with our Team of the Month for June to highlight some of the best players currently active in the NA scene. As always, Dust2.us' list consists of two professional-level players, two players from ESL Challenger League, and one standout name from ESEA Advanced. Additionally, the list includes the most impactful coach regardless of tier.

This month saw ESL Challenger League Season 47 conclude and ESL Challenger Jönköping be played out among other smaller events, so it was a bit quieter than June, but there's still plenty to talk about.

With Liquid not playing a single series in June while M80 were stuck stateside playing ESL Challenger League Season 47, Complexity's duo of Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski and Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli were something of a default choice for Dust2.us' best pro players of June.

However, while picking the duo was a given it is also true that the duo had a fantastic month on their own merits. In June, Complexity finally broke their LAN curse and secured a trophy at ESL Challenger Jönköping over Falcons while EliGE and hallzerk played leading roles in taking down the Saudi project. EliGE was the third-highest rated player at the whole event with a 1.34 rating over ten maps while hallzerk ended the event with a 1.20 rating over ten maps. With Liquid and M80 in the midst of their rebuilds, it is reassuring to know that NA has at least one squad that will come out of the player break in top form.

Moving onto ECL, we elected to omit Mario "malbsMd" Samayoa due to move to G2 placing the Guatemalan star firmly in the pro player camp. Additionally, as noted in our recent article on the top players in ECL S47, there's a lot more to the league than what M80 brings to the table. As such, Dust2.us selected Elevate's Derek "dare" Brown and Wildcard's Josh "JBa" Barutt to be highlighted this month.

Both players are some of the best riflers in the league, with dare's fantastic aggro rifling and pistol play helping him to end ECL S47 with a 1.25 HLTV rating over 37 maps. As for JBa, he is a far more passive player than dare, with his roles on Wildcard favoring clutching and survivability. He was survived many roster changes on Wildcard owing to his status as "one for the future" and he is clearly an integral piece to Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz's puzzle. Once the Swedes drop on Wildcard it will be interesting to see if he can keep up his 1.23 rating over 38 maps from last season, something that may signal he is ready to be called up to a larger team.

In the Advanced space, Legacy finished the season by continuing to be holy terrors, only dropping one map over the course of ESEA Advanced Season 49. Last season we highlighted Eduardo "dumau" Wolkmer but felt that it would be good to give Legacy's new AWPer, Guilherme "saadzin" Pacheco some shine. At the ESEA Advanced level he is essentially unchallenged, ending playoffs with a 1.44 rating over six maps. The real test for saadzin is to see how he will fare in ECL, but based on his performances with w7m earlier in the year, he will likely be incredibly deadly in his NA ECL debut.

Finally, for coach of the month Tiaan "T.c" Coertzen gets kudos for being the ol' reliable of the NA scene. His partnership with Johnny "JT" Theodosiou has continued to deliver, and more importantly, improve and there's no reason suspect that he will be leaving Complexity any time soon. The doctor has continued to get results and outside of the disaster at IEM Dallas 2024 has had a strong 2024 by NA standards.

Dust2.us’ Team of the Month for June 2024 is:

• Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski (Pro)

• Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli (Pro)

• Derek "dare" Brown (ECL)

• Josh "JBa" Barutt (ECL)

• Guilherme "saadzin" Pacheco (Advanced)

• Tiaan "T.c" Coertzen (Coach)