With a child on the way, the 2024 Copenhagen Major MVP says he would rather step away from pro Counter-Strike than sign a deal he does not believe in.
Justinas “jL” Lekavicius could leave professional Counter-Strike after the PGL Major Singapore if no team he wants to join comes in for him. The Lithuanian, who is standing in for Team Vitality at PGL Masters Bucharest 2026, told HLTV after Tuesday’s 2-0 win over NAVI that the Major is his cut-off point.
Ideally I would get a team and I could compete again for trophies, but if that doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world. To be honest, if I don’t find a team after Singapore, I might just call it quits. And then just focus on content, focus on wife, focus on my kid because that’s coming on the way.
On PGL’s broadcast the same evening, he had said that he has not signed anything for 2027 and expects most offers to arrive around the Major. The HLTV interview adds what happens if the right one does not. He would rather do other things than end up in a situation he does not want to be in, he said, and what he loves is the process of working towards a trophy with a team, more than the trophies themselves. “If I don’t see it happening, I’m not just going to sign a deal just to play.”
From Major MVP to stand-in
jL joined NAVI in the summer of 2023. Nine months later he was named MVP of PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, the first Major played in CS2, as NAVI lifted the trophy and he became the first Lithuanian to win a Major. He stepped away from the active lineup in July 2025, spent April and May 2026 on loan at MOUZ and left NAVI as a free agent on 1 July 2026.
Since then he has been a stand-in. At BLAST Open Porto he replaced mezii and reached the semi-finals with Vitality, and in Bucharest he fills in for apEX, who is at home for the birth of his child. He does not see the event as an audition. Even a final with this roster would not earn him much credit, he told HLTV: “It’s just Vitality, you know? They could get an academy player and still reach finals.”
Modest numbers in a playoff team
His figures in Bucharest back up the point. Over four series and nine maps, jL is 111-113 in K-D, and his ADR has not gone above 72.1 in any series.
| Opponent | Result | K-D | ADR | KAST |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 9z | 2-0 | 25-27 | 51.9 | 71.7% |
 MongolZ | 2-0 | 21-16 | 61.0 | 85.7% |
 FUT | 1-2 | 38-51 | 58.7 | 70.1% |
 NAVI | 2-0 | 27-19 | 72.1 | 83.8% |
The best of those lines came against his old team on Tuesday, and the worst in the 2-1 defeat by FUT, the only series Vitality have lost at the event. Vitality went through to the playoffs with a 3-1 record all the same.
What is left
Vitality’s quarter-final is on 29 or 30 October, against an opponent settled by Wednesday’s last Swiss round, and the Bo5 grand final is on 31 October. The quarter-final will be jL’s fifth match for the team, the number that puts a stand-in on the roster Valve uses for Vitality’s Major invite.
The Major itself runs from 25 November to 13 December, and apEX is expected back for it. That leaves Bucharest as jL’s only confirmed event, and the weeks around Singapore as the window in which he expects the offers to come. If none of them is the project he describes, he has already said what comes next.
