Luis Scola hooks into the Zoom with the invitation of Ole from the room he occupies in Las Vegas, where the Selection prepares, as he calls, the Olympic game. It will be the fifth for the 41-year-old and 2.06-meter power forward who has had a 26-year career as a professional – yes, it’s not a mistake, the accounts give, what happens is that he started at 15 – and he is not thinking “In the final touch”, although he suspects when it will be. It is not that he dodges it, but that he is faithful to his thinking: first the team and the objective that is ahead. Then you will see.
Luifa and his teammates have already played two friendlies in Sin City. Just before the 84-87 against Australia, on Saturday (this Monday was a 91-74 defeat against Nigeria), another team, with which the basketball captain tunes in, also played, but a very expensive final in many ways. After all, football won the Copa América and made a country happy, including the porteño.
“I empathize a lot, that’s why I was very happy. For Messi, for Say Maria, for Otamendi, for Omen… Very happy because I think they are geniuses. I love the things they got, I love the way they are. They are totally different from how I am, but I love that youth, although some are a little more veteran. But I like it a lot, it makes me very happy that they won, It makes me very happy that Messi has won. I am an ultra fan of Messi and I have a lot of admiration for him. So I’m glad, I think that today the world is a little bit fairer, like the world is a little more in harmony”, The light blue and white No. 5 was put on on 4.
Scola is not talking about results, he is not going to say that he is going to seek the gold medal. And on the subject Messi also thinks that way. However, reality means that even he must come a little out of his usual way of seeing things. And he admits it: “In the end, I am repeating this all the time that the result does not change anything, and the reality is that it does not change anything. The game did not change what Messi is for better or for worse, but it is a little bit fairer, everything is fine, with a little more harmony ”.
Scola with the gold of Athens 2004 within the Golden generation.
A great, Luis, puts the people who deserve it in their place: “I’m not going to lie, it happens to me with the greats in general. With Ronaldo, with Djokovic that he wins Wimbledon… I feel that today the world is a little fairer because tennis gave him back a bit what he was giving. I feel like there is a certain harmony in which these greats do well because they have to do well, because they are really great. In the case of Messi, particularly, I am very happy for him and for everyone, but for him in particular”.
Scola and Messi met in Beijing 2008, when Leo won gold and Luifa, bronze; they were also seen other times. Says who debuted in the National League for Ferro at 15: “I don’t have a daily relationship, but what happened once is that I played in Indiana and they were in Washington doing a friendly match; and I was playing the Wizards (in Washington) and we got them tickets to come, and the whole team came. After the game, we talked. I’m sure if I run into him somewhere, we’ll chat. Also, at least I, every time I crossed it, in the Olympic Games or wherever, he and everyone else were tremendously nice. “
Scola ended up playing for Varese.
Messi no longer goes to the Games, an appointment in which football is reserved for those under 23 years of age, including three older ones. But Scola continues. It started with Athens 2004, at the age of 24, and has already won gold. He knows the cloth well, and that is why in this new and complicated situation affected by the pandemic, he analyzes: “Getting together and stuff is forbidden. The fun things that the Olympic experience has are forbidden, they are going to do different games. But it is the world in which we have to live at the moment, the situation is strange, it is difficult. On the other hand, in the end, the least of our problems will be the Olympic Games; To complain about that would be to disrespect what is happening in the world a little. People are experiencing things that are much more important, much more serious. And we have the possibility to play them, which is a lot. They will not be the same as always, they will not be the best, but we have to be grateful that, despite the world situation we are experiencing, we can still play an Olympic Game ”.
Scola, Mascherano, Agüero and Messi in 2015.
-What would you like to see happen at these Games?
-That I arrive in the best possible way; that I can finish the preparation in the best possible way to the point that I am satisfied with how I prepared; that he is physically well; that is mentally well. And the same for the team: that we compete at the best level of our possibilities; later, that is going to take us somewhere, that we do not know what it is. If we achieve what I am saying individually, and collectively, we are going to rock that result, it is ours, and we are going to value it very much. That is what I hope, neither more nor less.
Campazzo and Deck, key NBA gift.
-They already have two weeks to prepare. How do you see the team?
-I see the team well, within a tournament that is very difficult in the sense that there is a lot of talent, there are many teams with potential and it is not easy at all. I hope that the team arrives in the best possible way, that it plays to the maximum of its possibilities, and then … Well, we are going to play against one of the best players in the world, as is Luka doncic (Slovenia); against the last world champion, as is Spain; against the local in a moment of very high form that it has with players in the NBA and in the universities. And if you manage to pass that group, which is already very difficult, a lot of teams will come to you that are going around, like Australia, United States, France, Nigeria… The tournament has a very high level and it is very difficult to achieve results, but if the team is at its best, it will achieve the best possible result.
-Compared to the 2019 World Cup in China, what feeling do you have?
-The situation in comparison with China and Tokyo is different in the sense that the team that went to play in China had been playing well, it was a team that had a lot of potential, it was seen that it could do important things but internally it was tied, content. He was in the shadow of what had happened to the other, to the previous generation that had won the Olympic medal and so on. After Rio (2016) there was a very great feeling of emptiness, which was felt in the environment as if saying “now Argentine basketball is over, the players who did the things they did during these 10 or 12 years have left and now it comes a very difficult time in which we are not going to be up to the task ”. The team felt that shadow, that constant comparison; if you like, it was not taken into account in popular opinion, in the press. And that was a kind of anchor so that these players could individually and collectively develop the maximum potential so that this team could fly with their own flight.. Although we had already played the AmeriCup and the Playoffs very well, it was not enough because we had not yet played a major tournament. So the theme, the goal of the most important people within the group, was to try to convince the team that we were not a transition until the good players came, but that we were a team to do important things.
Luifa at the 2019 World Cup.
-And today?
Today, two years after China, having finished runners-up in the world, the theme is different: you don’t have to convince this group that they can do important things because they already did. It is a confirmed thing, so the theme of this tournament is how we can return to have the same level of performance and even turn the screw and overcome it. That is going to take us somewhere that we do not know where it will be. We have to have the same performance that we achieve in China and go one step further, go up a notch because our players are one year better. That is our goal, this year is different because it is not a mental question of saying “let’s think we can do this”, because we already know we can do it.
-It is counted for this with an Argentine reversal in the NBA. Did you expect it?
-Whenever you achieve a result like the one we achieved, with the level of play like we had, it captures attention. This is always the case, in fact this is how it happened with us, except in the case of Manu (Ginobili), who went to the NBA before. But later, Indianapolis (2002 World Cup runner-up) put us on top of the table of the big teams, the big leagues, the big names. Some finished in the NBA, others in the Euroleague and others in the ACB of Spain. That already puts you in the mouth of the clubs and your level is improving. With Atenas (2004), that process was repeated again, and whenever something like this happens at the national team level with a performance like the one there were these years or that of China, it will put you in everyone’s mouth and it will get you better. places to work.
-The team grows with NBA players …
-I, before going to China, at a table they asked my opinion and I made a comment: we always have this dichotomy, this speech, this narrative that the Argentine School, the eggs, when we put on the shirt, the extra pass … As there is a kind of secret that we and only we have and that the world envies us. Well, I am very against that, because that does not exist, we do not do anything that others do not know. On the contrary, others do things that we do not know and that we should know. The reality is that today you cannot win without talent, you need talent to win. And today the talent is in only one place in the world: the NBA. It’s very difficult to win if you don’t have NBA players, and I said it was impossible to win a medal if you don’t have NBA players, in fact. I used the word “five” players in the NBA, a quintet. The United States, France, Spain, at least seven teams have a first-rate NBA quintet. The irony is that I screwed up my own argument, or at least made the necessary force to screw it up… But the reality is that this is the case and it continues to be the case. Despite what we have achieved in China, you cannot hope to win games when you are less talented than your rival. There is no other way, there is no extra pass, there is no Argentine School, there are no eggs, there is no …
-What should be the conditions of this team, then? How do you have to play?
-Let’s see: the eggs and the intensity is not that they are not important, it is that they are assumed, it is obvious. What this team has to have is a very high level of intensity, they have to play very well, they have to play very efficiently. We don’t have the 12 players that France or Spain or the United States have. We have to have a well-oiled rotation, a well-oiled defense and we have to have a lot of pace. That is what we have to have when competing against teams that have things that we do not have, read talent, depth, size … We have good players, good playmakers, and we have a rotation of seven or eight players who are doing very well, plus a 9 and a 10 that can help you particularly at some point in the tournament.. But that rhythm, that back and forth that we had in China, that is what we cannot miss.