The tooth in question was hanging in there pretty well

The tooth in question was hanging in there pretty well, but in 2006 in the World Championships of Japan… that changed. We were playing New Zealand in the quarter finals and I was driving in for a layup when my body got tangled up with a defender and I ended up taking a hard fall face first to the floor. The result was knocking out that same tooth that gave me problems in 2003, along with 2-3 others. Manu took a picture of the 4 teeth lying on the court and I think that picture was on his webpage for quite a while after that.

　　On another occasion, they took a picture of me below the belt with “my window open”, but my national team teammates are pretty good guys and they kept this photo hidden, along with many other secret photos, over the past 10 years or so.

　　Over all, these types of hits, cuts and injuries are pretty common for basketball players and they generally aren’t all that serious, although at times they’re pretty painful and occasionally cause you to miss a game or two.

　　A lot of people, both in Houston and Argentina, have spoken about my streak of not missing a NBA game and the possibility of missing one. When they ask me this question, I answer that based on what I consider a missed game, I’ve already missed one when I only played 22 seconds against Oklahoma City. Technically, I haven’t missed a game and the boxscore shows that I played in the game and it also is figured in the cumulative statistics. I don’t put much attention into stats, so I consider this game a missed game for me. Fortunately, I was able to not miss the Clippers game following the injury, so the streak is still alive, for those who love to follow the stats. I don’t put much stake into the streak, but I do hate missing games! I always do my best to be at every game, regardless of how I feel, but I realize that the reality of it is that I will eventually miss a game or two. Hopefully I don’t miss much at all, but it’s bound to happen someday.

　　To be able to play in the Clippers game last week, I had to convince our trainer Keith Jones, the doctor who gave me the stitches, and the head coach. I was able to convince them in this case because about the worst that could have happened to me the other day would be to re-open the cut and have to get the stitches again. There wasn’t a lot of other risk associated with this injury. So, they let me play under the one condition that I wear protective goggles. To be honest, they look and feel terrible. I made a bet with one of my teammates about how fast it would take the Clippers fans to make fun of my goggles. I was barely out of the tunnel and one yelled out “Hey Scola! Where did you leave your helicopter!?” Brilliant…. I had to laugh. Very funny!

　　I hope that next week I don’t have to talk about these goggles any longer and I especially hope that I don’t have to talk about cuts, stitches or injuries the rest of the year!