I think it got a lot to do with many things. First of all, Scola himself, Ginobili, Argentina and International Players. Scola and Ginobili are mainly higly respected international players, Ginobili himself is regarded as a great player in both south america and europe. By that time Scola´s manager went public about how Scola was being treated by Bufford and how he only talked to him by email. Ginobili is highly respected in SA, he took paycuts twice (2 year 2 millions rookie contract and 50 6 million year contract) to stay with the team, and was really pissed about his friend being screwed to play at the NBA level, he went public in Argentina about this many times, and the Spurs didn´t want to piss him off. Spurs cap-first policy is mainly based of convincing good international players to accept less money to play in the NBA, after screwing Scola for 4 years (don´t forget they drafted him 4 years before the trade) they were loosing respect in the international basketball community and Scola being a higly respected international player also make it worse. He was by that time All-Euroleague for fourth consecutive year. It was believed in Spurs FO that Scola would mess their chemistry because of playing the same position as TD and being able to somehow "eclipse" TD at times, anyway i will dissregard this point as TD ended up playing center most of the time the last few years, but they thought Scola would demand shots and playing time, something we all know didn´t happen and in any case they could just ask Ginobili. Also Bonner was believed to be their main PF mainly because he is able to hit the 3 ball to open the court for TD, yet that was partially true, i think they would trade Bonner for Scola in a heartbeat now. By the end of 2007 Scola went public on how the Spurs needed to give him asome kind of contract so that he would be able to pay his buyout, Spurs were reticent to invest those 3 millions (Scola buyout) in a image contract to help him (something the Rockets agreed in a week), saying that the league forbids it (actually the league forbid the teams to pay the buyout but anything else is legal as the Rox shown), so Scola and his manager started having really a bad relationship with the Spurs, evendoe Luis still wanted to play for them cause both his sons are Spurs fans and Duncan is his favorite NBA player and a mirror to him, plus Spurs already had Ginobili and Oberto, both Scola mates at the Argentina NT. I always believed that Spurs FO and Spurs Fans were reticent to the idea of having 3 Argentineans in the team, but is just an idea i have. So, all thing considered, and after they failed to involve him in a 3 Team trade to the Cavs, they trade him here for cap relief and to make Luis a favor by givjng him a chance to play at the NBA level and regain respect in the international community, the Spurs were champions a year before and the FO could afford to make mistakes, plus, they would later try and draft Splitter, Scola second-closest friend (next to countrymen Prigioni who i always want the Rox to sign) and apprenctice in TAU, imagine if they drafted him, and with Scola still in TAU with him, i would be almost impossible for the spurs to get the guy, anyway, in the end, Splitter didn´t have the will to come to the NBA and accepted a larger deal in TAU (almost twice what Scola makes here) and killed Spurs hopes of aquiring him. In the end most Ginobili fans (from Argentina and Europe) in Spurs forums predicted that this trade will come back to bite them as Scola was the best player to ease the Spurs transition into Duncan getting older. If i remember anything else from the history i´ll post it again. And sorry for the redaction, but is difficult for me to write in another language a correlated history while having the facts coming into my mind and having to chronocally ordered while i write. Hope you find this usefull.
I just posted a comment in the Luis Scola thread. I thanked all the spurs to their contribution for the Rockets
