In 2014, Luis Scola led the opposition of the team of the selected team to participate in the World Cup in Spain in the event that there were no changes in the leadership of the team Argentine Basketball Confederation (CABB). It had an effect: the president, Germán Vaccaro, resigned and a legal case was opened for his management of the entity. Then the national team traveled and played the World Cup.
In 2019, the captain and other prominent members of the Golden Generation, and even technical director Sergio Hernández, publicly endorsed Federico Susbielles’s candidacy for the CABB presidency (now abbreviated to “CAB”), but the Bahiense lost the election in December to the hands of Fabian Borro. Given the result, Hernández resigned to continue leading the national team, but then the leadership convinced him to continue until the Tokyo Olympics.
Three weeks to go for that competition, the most important for basketball. And Scola, this time without threats of resignation, shook what seemed like a calm sea for the delegation that is in Las Vegas, United States, preparing its way to Tokyo 2020. “The people who are in the CAB do not want to know anything about me at all: they have a huge rejection for me, for what I think and for what I want to do. And he wants me as far away as possible “, replied the power forward in an interview with the newspaper ClarionNot to mention Borro, also president of the Obras Sanitarias club.
What separates the most important player in the history of the selected team and the managers, led by Borro? Scola didn’t specify it, but he did make it clear that the rift that leads them away is an abyss. “Our ways of understanding a sports organization in any of its aspects they are on so opposite paths what […] yes me […] say “we want you to come help us” I would feel uncomfortable […]. Y I’m sure they are comfortable that I think differently”, The former protagonist of the NBA and the Spanish league graficed.
Scola, 40, is a month away from what everyone assumes will be his retirement from basketball. Given his involvement in organizational matters of the Confederation, it is possible to project that at some point he will dedicate himself to organizing sport from an institutional position. Right now that seems to be further away in time than close. “Right now I don’t have that interest, it’s not in the plans. To create a party and win the elections would be to be part of a system that I think needs to be changed. It is irrelevant what I think, because I am not thinking of changing it, because I am not going to play by those rules. I don’t have that interest, at least right now. Maybe things will be different in a couple of years ”, ruled out the current world runner-up.
Although everything indicates that, whether he has the glory of a new Olympic medal or not, in August Scola will be a former basketball player, today the number 4 has no incentive to face that challenge of leading the entity. “At some point I had that interest, but when these people came back to run the CAB, I lowered my arms a bit. Because at the end of the day We did so much to change things and we find ourselves, five years later, practically in the same place as before … That was quite demotivating, ”explained the former Olympic champion, who at age 40 continues to command the selected team on the field but outside of it he runs a little to the side. For now, of course.