It's about two weeks old but I enjoyed the read. Especially(Thanks whoever it was! lol!)the part about his son. http://www.foxsportshouston.com/pag...f-Luis-Scolas-mop=1&blockID=98485&feedID=3544 By Ken Hoffman, Houston Chronicle Posted: December 2, 2009 With his long, matted, sweaty, ratty hair held back with what appears to be a shoelace, and his constant three-day growth of straggly beard (how does he do that?), Rockets power forward Luis Scola looks like one of those nut jobs waving a sign that says, "The end is near." His hair has become his trademark. Last year, the Rockets held Luis Scola Wig Night, with 5,000 fans wearing Scola-style mops on their heads. It was the "must-have" giveaway of the season. This year for Halloween, Rocket's general manager Daryl Morey dressed his son in a wig and No. 4 Rockets jersey. He went trick-or-treating as Scola. Fans wonder on message boards: Is that hair just a sweaty mess, or is Scola dipping his head in Dippity Do? His hair looks like a raccoon caught in a drain ditch. I asked the third-year player from Argentina: Is that sweat in your hair or some product they try to sell you at the cash register in a hair salon? "No, I just use shampoo and conditioner," he said. Since this was after showering after practice, his hair did look natural and blown dry. It's long, parted in the middle and tucked behind his ears. He's got one or two grays starting to show. "I had fun with Wig Night last year," he said. "I never thought anything about my hair, but when the team came up with the idea, I said, ‘OK, let's do it.' I kept a few of them myself; they're in my house." His 3-year-old son occasionally puts on the Scola wig when he plays basketball. He says to his friends, "You're Yao, you're Tracy McGrady, you're Mutombo … and I'm my daddy!" Scola said he wore his hair short when he began playing professionally in Argentina at age 15 in 1995. "I started growing it long around 2001, when I moved to Spain to play professionally there. I just said, ‘I'm going to let it grow.' One of my teammates said I didn't have the guts to do it." Scola wears a headband, but it's not a wide, perspiration-absorbing, terry-cloth band like LeBron James and most U.S. players wear. Scola's headband is narrow, like string licorice, and unless you look closely, you can't tell he's wearing one. He said that Houston fans have gotten used to his hair, but he does get some razzing on opponents' courts. "They say all kinds of stuff - some of it is funny, some not so funny." And how does his maintain that three-day stubble? He's like Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice without the pastels. "My beard grows very fast. I shaved today. In two days it will look like a beard. "I don't do it to look tough. I just don't like shaving."
I feel the same way. The guy just plays the game as it should be played. If he were a couple of inches taller and had a quarter of the athleticism we've seen come and go so often in this league, Scola would be an All Star. Luis also has a real leadership role on this team. You see it on the court. I knew we'd gotten a steal from SA when we got him, because I'd heard about his success in Europe and on the national team, but he's much better than I expected. Luis was well on his way to averaging a double-double this season before the eye injury, with solid offensive production, much improved team defense (and even man defense), and improved passing, seemingly game by game. Hell, that's not even mentioning his rebounding. Scola has quietly become one of the top rebounders in the league. That 12 or 22 seconds on the court, whatever the time was, on that one game where he was injured hammered his stats. Unsurprisingly, Coach A and company couldn't keep him off the court. You and I would have been glued to a couch with a bottle of Vicodin for days! Clutch got some BS from a few folks around here about not having the right stats on Scola immediately after the game, because he intially left that game off his calculations (could have simply been the software and probably was), but I thought he had the right idea.
IMO if he would have entered the NBA at a younger age he would have eventually made it to an All-Star game, even if just one time.
nice and funny article, thanks for posting! scola was a good steal from the spurs, when I was watchin him playing with the Argentina team, I wondered that he had the talent to play in the NBA.
He is back on track, as he averaged 10.5 rpg last month it will take him about 20 games to be back at 10 rpg. he is already at 14 ppg again.
