In 2010, Scola won the Konex Award Merit Diploma as one of the five best basketball players of the last decade in Argentina. He was honored as the national flag bearer at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
As a member of the senior Argentina national team, Scola has won multiple medals: the silver medal at the 1999 South American Championship, the bronze medal at the 1999 FIBA Americas Championship, the gold medal at the 2001 FIBA Americas Championship, the silver medal at the 2002 FIBA World Championship, the silver medal at the 2003 FIBA Americas Championship, the gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics, the silver medal at the 2007 FIBA Americas Championship, the bronze medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics, the bronze medal at the 2009 FIBA Americas Championship, the gold medal at the 2011 FIBA Americas Championship and the bronze medal at the 2013 FIBA Americas Championship among other titles. At the 2015 FIBA Americas Championship tournament, Scola became the all-time leading scorer in FIBA AmeriCup history and won his fourth tournament MVP.
Scola broke two records for the Argentina national team at the FIBA World Cup during the 2010 edition: top overall scorer for Argentina at a World Cup (beating Ernesto Gehrmann’s 331 points) and most points scored for Argentina in one game at a World Cup (scoring 37 against Brazil in the round of 16, therefore beating Alberto Desimone’s 35 points scored against Mexico in 1963).
In 2019, at 39 years of age, he was part of the team that won the gold medal at the Pan American Games.
At the 2019 FIBA World Cup, he scored 135 points and 57 rebounds in seven matches en route to the final. Scola scored 23 points against Nigeria in a preliminary round of the 2019 World Cup game at Wuhan, giving him a total of 611 points in his World Cup career. With this, Scola passed Andrew Gaze’s total of 594 and is now second only to Brazilian scoring great Oscar Schmidt’s 906 points in the tournament.
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Scola scored a team-high 23 points in a loss to Slovenia in the preliminary round of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
The game was paused during Scola’s final game at the 2020 Summer Olympics, when his Argentinian team was playing against Australia. With less than a minute left in the game, Scola was checked out, and players from both teams, coaches, and those in the stadium gave him a standing ovation out of respect. The referees allowed this pause in the game as they understood the importance of the occasion. (rp)