Jake "Stewie2k" Yip is the in-game leader for Cloud9 and a polarizing figure in the CS:GO community. His acquisition by C9 at the beginning of the year was met with mixed feelings from many personalities within the community, but he's help his team achieve a Top 5 ranking on HLTV.

In Day 1 at the iBUYPOWER Masters 2016, theScore esports sat down with Stewie2k right after his qualification to IEM Season XI Oakland and talked about his growth as a player and community backlash.

You guys just 16-0'd TyLoo, how do you feel?

It's a good confidence booster for my team and hopefully it keeps my team motivated to keep winning.

Quick little 16-0 against @tyloogaming to put us into Oakland! 😁 — Michael Grzesiek (@C9shroud) November 13, 2016

In Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert’s vlog from ELEAGUE after you guys were eliminated from the group stage, n0thing mentioned that tilt was a factor in losing the decider match against FaZe Clan.

However, you guys went on to win ESL Pro League Season 4 over SK Gaming, what changed in between Atlanta and Sao Paolo?

We do have emotional players, we do go on tilt for a little bit and when we do it takes a couple rounds to recover. But against SK we said, "we have nothing to lose, we are in front of their crowd, so we can't let them set the pace." We just had to play with confidence and be willing to play together as a team and keep our mentality straight.

In an interview with PVPLive, you said that the team needs to improve on its team play to the level of Virtus.pro. Are you guys modeling yourselves to the Polish team? What other improvements need to be made?

Well, right now we have a lot of "puggy" players, so we have a really loose playstyle. It could be good sometimes, but we also need a different pace. We can play really fast at one point, but we also need to have a slow pace so we can work together.

I think we need to communicate a little more and just talk together on what our strengths are, rather than our weaknesses and then we can improve that way.

SK and C9 are two of the top teams in the world and neither team have a coach. Is this the preferred setup for you guys, or are there plans to pick up a coach or analyst, especially ahead of the Major?

Well, ever since Slemmy [Alec "Slemmy" White] left the team and we picked up Tim [Timothy "autimatic" Ta] we kinda told ourselves that we have a certain way that we like to play.

We don't like to play under a coach and we don't like to be told what to do, we kind of like to tell each other what we'd like to do and see how we can work off that.

Having a coach isn't necessary for us right now, but we're not closed to having a coach. We just want a coach that we think could help us significantly, rather than just a little bit.

So the right fit, rather than just putting in anyone.

Yup.

Since Nuke was added to the map pool you guys haven’t played a single official on it. Often it’s your auto-ban, except against other teams that seem to have Nuke as their auto-ban as well. Do you believe Nuke can be worked into C9’s pool?

Well, it's hard because personally I don't like playing Nuke, but the team really does want to play. I've never played it competitively before, the old one, so it's kind of uncomfortable for me.

We have such strong maps on the other six maps and we think we can just improve on that. We're going to work on Nuke, but I think we're going to keep with the other six maps.

RELATED: Nuclear Fallout: Pros react to map pool update

You’re currently the in-game leader for the team, a setup that seems to be working very well. However, do you enjoy being the leader? Is this an ideal situation for you?

Well, sometimes it gets pretty frustrating. I have a picture in my head of how I want things to be done specifically, but someone doesn't do it correctly, so it gets pretty frustrating at times.

I picked up the in-game leader role so everyone's weights can kind of be picked up by themselves and I can just focus on them more, rather than myself. So it's kinda hard to frag at the same time, but I guess it's for the better of the team, so it's OK.

When you first joined Cloud9 there was a lot of backlash from the community. Then you guys almost went undefeated in the EPL NA season and C9 broke into the Top 10 of HLTV’s rankings, there was backlash again. Now, after winning EPL, you guys now broke into the Top 5 HLTV rankings.

Do you feel you’ve proven the haters wrong, or do you think you have to go further?

Well, we're not the team to really look at the hate, there's always going to be hate. You can win three Majors in a row and as soon as you lose your first match you're going to get backlash from it. The community's like a goldfish, they'll pay attention to the obvious rather than what really happened.

We don't really pay attention to that, but I guess we did prove the haters wrong, so hopefully we gain more fans, and haters.

Do you believe C9 is the best team in NA, or is it still SK or another team?

Well, I wouldn't say SK is a part of NA just because they play in it, since they're from Brazil. So if we exclude the Brazilians, I'd say we are number one in NA, but with them, I'd still say SK is better than us.

Describe autimatic in one word.

Versatile.

Why?

He can play any role, he knows how to play certain situations. Honestly, I have really high standards for myself, so I do think I am better than some of the players, so I know how to play certain situations as well.

When we picked up Tim, he plays a lot of the roles similar to how I do, so it really shocked me in a way. Ever since then, I don't think anything really shocks me from him. I think he's a really good player.

Timothy "autimatic" Ta has added a lot of firepower to Cloud9, and synergy with Jake "Stewie2k" Yip

A number of teams have recently been acquired by traditional sports people, such as Team Liquid and Magic Johnson, as well as Team Dignitas and the Philadelphia 76ers. How do you feel about sports and esports blending together?

I think it's really cool that sports are getting into esports, because it's expanding now and there's a lot more exposure.

What team, across any sport, would you like to be associated with?

I actually wish that I could be under the [Golden State] Warriors association, kinda like Liquid, I think that would be pretty cool because I'm a Warriors fan. Other than that, I think any other association would be cool, just to get a little more exposure for Cloud9.

It seems you’ve grown a lot since you first joined C9 in January. How have you changed as a person and a player since the start of the year?

Well, as a player I always think I have really high standards and expectations for myself and I do picture myself on top of a lot of players, but I usually keep that to myself because I don't like publicly saying that; you could get a bad reputation.

But as a person, at one point I did have a really big ego because I'm "famous in esports," but over time I learned that it really doesn't matter who you are. Everyone is equal, as cliché as that sounds, so there's really no point in putting yourself on top of others.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Navneet Randhawa does stuff and things at theScore esports. You can follow her on Twitter.