Luis Scola is not happy, but he is positive. He is not young anymore, and his shot deserted him in Game 4 against Indiana and he has barely played since. The Raptors are going small; Miami is going small; he is slumping; he does not fit. The long-haired Argentine can bicep curl more weight than any Raptor in history, but he cannot go small.

Desperate after Jonas Valanciunas went down, they tried Scola for five minutes in Game 3, and he looked out of sorts, even rattled. He missed two open threes, committed three fouls, was a minus-13. But as the Toronto Raptors entered Game 4 against the Heat, Scola was still trying to be a part of this team, still trying to help.

“It’s not fun,” admitted Scola recently. “It’s not fun. I’m positive. I believe that you have to do the right thing every day, regardless of the situation. When it’s going well, it’s easy. Now it’s a little bit more difficult. It’s part of the challenge, it’s part of the growth, it’s part of the process. And to stick with it, to turn it around, it’s one of the things you enjoy as an athlete, as a professional basketball player.”

All he can do is try to be ready, and try to help. Dwane Casey says the 36-year-old Scola is a constant presence in timeouts, in the locker room, imparting basketball wisdom that the coach trusts.

“The key is, his heart is in the right place,” says Casey. “You can have guys who are saying stuff for show, but he’s not doing it for show. His heart is in the right place.”

Your Call!

Right now, it’s what Scola can offer. He was 3-for-14 in 55 minutes in the first round, and after leading the Raptors in three-point percentage as a spot starter, was 1-for-9 from long distance. Thoughtfulness only goes so far.

Still, Scola cuts to the heart of what has ailed the Raptors in these playoffs. He points out that expectations inside and outside this team are haywire. After a Game 1 loss he said, basically, relax.

“We are going to lose more games,” Scola says. “We’re not going to win 4-1. I’ll tell you that right now. We’re not going to beat them by 20. They are going to make a run. All those things are going to happen, and if we have to be OK because that’s the way you build a series . . . We can’t play thinking we have to be up 10 from the first quarter all the way to the end. We can’t think that we cannot lose.

“We are meant to be in the conference final, and we are meant to fight in the conference final for the spot in the (NBA finals). But all that make us have this kind of like mental break. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s happening again,’ ‘oh my God, they had a run.’ (In Game 1) they make this little run, they get up three and our whole body language, oooh. The whole crowd was like, ahhh. We were down three. What were we expecting?

“We got the game totally under control, we were playing well, we can’t let that happen. We gotta be OK, we gotta know the runs are coming, we gotta know the losses are coming. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to win the series.”

He sounds like a coach, he is told, and he laughs.

“I’m still a player. Don’t retire me yet.”

He continues, because his thoughts are extensive on basketball, on everything.

“It’s something we obviously talk about it because I think it’s obvious for us. A lot of our problems are mental problems. A lot of them are. And this is what really hurt us, because I’m OK with losing and I think every athlete and everybody in the sport business has to be OK with losing at some point, but you’re OK with losing playing to the best of your ability. If we play the way we played 82 games and we lose, what can you do? You can’t expect to overplay. But when you underplay, that sucks. You don’t wanna do that. You don’t want to lose playing worse than your abilities.

“We’re all going to be happy when we win this series, which we will, and they all talk about how great of a year we had. So we can be OK with the reactions and expectations and all that when we win.”

He remains optimistic. He predicted, fiercely, that Kyle Lowry’s shooting would come back. But it’s hard. The funny thing is during this stretch, Scola received the greatest honour of his life. When he saw a tweet that said he had been chosen to carry Argentina’s flag in the Opening Ceremony of the first Olympics ever held in South America, he didn’t believe it.

They kept coming, and he came around. He sounds in awe when talking about his three previous Games — about working out next to powerlifters who would add six or seven plates and lift for hours, about talking with Novak Djokovic on the bus to Djokovic’s tennis match, about running into Usain Bolt in the athlete cafeteria. He is very proud.

That ceremony will be a highlight of his life. What does it feel like?

“I’m worried,” Scola says with a grin. “I might trip.”

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