Sank his frame into a pale pink recliner, his shoulders wrapped in a white Boston Celtics hoodie, feet stuffed into jet-black New Balances.
“I’ve seen and done a lot of things,” the 6-foot-11 former Kansas and NBA center said. “I’ve lived a great life. I’ve done everything there is to do.
“I was fine with nature taking its course.”
He meant death.
Pollard, 49, had a heart transplant at Vanderbilt Medical Center in mid-February. Four months ago, he would rather have died than get the operation. “From September to December, I was adamantly (against it),” he said.
His old heart was unwell, but it was a representation of the thirst-for-life personality that drew people to him. He didn’t want to part with it; he wanted to defeat the disease that was killing it.
“The connection to my heart was existential,” he said. “It’s ingrained in American society that your heart is your spirit, that your heart is what makes you . . . you.”
Pollard knows someone else had to die so he could have their heart, and he’s grateful for them in a way he didn’t know was possible.
He found the answer to the question he asked himself before surgery: How could someone else’s heart ever replace his?
Scot Pollard was the Kansas basketball hero ‘no one saw coming’
KU coach Roy Williams was laughing at the scorer’s table during one of those day games at Allen Fieldhouse when sunbeams pierce the windows.
Pollard was getting a curtain call in his final home game as a Jayhawk. He’d just surprised everyone by draining his only collegiate 3-point attempt, in the last two minutes of a senior day blowout of Kansas State.
“He came and grabbed me, hugged me and we were both laughing like crazy,” Williams said. “He said, ‘I should’ve been shooting those my whole career!’ ” Pollard cartwheeled on to the floor moments later for his senior day speech.
KU fans were enamored with his hustle — and his weirdness. He grew mutton chops and painted his fingernails for games. It was a precursor to his NBA career, when he was nicknamed “The Butcher” and “Samarai Scot” for his wild hair and physical play.
Former NBA and Kansas center Scot Pollard, who received a heart transplant at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Feb. 2024, was a beloved figure at KU during his career there from 1993-97.
“He became a larger-than-life, iconic guy around Lawrence,” said former KU guard Greg Gurley, who played with Pollard and hosted one of his recruiting visits. “He was a personality no one saw coming.”
Pollard didn’t have that energy in September 2023. His failing heart made 10,000 extra beats a day with no consistency. He labored to walk and talk because of , and a genetic that his father had, and who was on the heart transplant list when he died in 1991.
A symptomatic case of — some people have it with no symptoms — can cause the heart to stiffen, or enlarge, and build scar tissue that limits effective blood flow. Pollard’s doctors told him the gene from his dad had been unlocked by a non-COVID virus that he contracted in 2021.
Pollard received three in three years — the procedures burned his heart in an attempt to create normal rhythm — and also had a put in before he accepted a heart transplant as his last option.
He and his wife, Dawn, didn’t discuss his mortality often. She didn’t think he would actually let himself die, but Pollard was saying otherwise.
“I was like, no, that’s not an option. You have to keep going,” Dawn said. “This doesn’t stop here.”
Exploring pre-transplant emotions in heart patients
Los Angeles Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal’s elbow hit Pollard’s chin, then everything went dark.
“All I remember,” Pollard said, “was Chris Webber standing above me saying, ‘No, no, no. We need you.’ Because apparently I was yelling, ‘I’m gonna (expletive) kill him!’ ”
Pollard averaged one foul for every 4.5 minutes he played in the Sacramento Kings’ 2002 Western Conference finals seven-game slugfest with the Lakers. He ended his 11-year NBA career after winning a championship with the Celtics in 2008. Afterward, he dabbled in broadcasting, went on “Survivor” for a season, and acted as the villain in a 2013 horror movie called “Axeman.”
Feb 4, 2001; Los Angeles, CA, USA; FILE PHOTO; Los Angeles Lakers forward Mark Madsen (35) battles for a rebound with Sacramento Kings forward Scot Pollard (31) during the 2nd half of the Lakers 100-94 win over Sacramento at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports
Living a big life made his heart, in some ways, feel irreplaceable. “My struggle with that was, am I going to be the same with someone else’s heart?” Pollard said.
Mourning the heart as the lost spirit or soul is not uncommon with transplant recipients. Some ask to keep their old hearts and bury them ceremonially, said Pollard’s surgeon, Dr. Ashish Shah, who is Vanderbilt’s chairman of the department of cardiac surgery and surgical director of its heart transplant program.
Dr. Craig Smith, a Vanderbilt associate professor of psychology and human development who since 1988 has studied how people cope with chronic painful conditions, understands why recipients struggle to leave their old heart behind — or in Pollard’s case, consider death an option. Serious health issues have stronger mental effects on young adults and middle-aged patients than elderly ones, Smith said.
“Especially younger, fit, able people who haven’t been hit yet with many of the symptoms of aging,” Smith said. “They really feel violated and rejected — I think those are OK words to use — in a very real way by their body or whatever caused the accident, in a way that older, aging adults are not, because they expect their body to be in a state of breakdown.”
Pollard’s sister, Lyne, also has a heart condition and helped care for their dad when he was ill. She talked with her brother about the physical concerns about surgery and the emotional questions he wanted answered.
“He could share so much because we’ve been through the journey,” Lyne said. “I told him (the heart) is a muscle. You’ll still be in love with your wife, your kids. You’ll still have that passion for life.”
Why Scot Pollard decided to get a heart transplant
Pollard was browsing a Facebook group page for heart transplant recipients and caregivers late last year when he changed his mind. The post reiterated that the transplant operations are about whole families, not just recipients.
Pollard has four children. His son, , is a 6-4, 260-pound junior at Carmel High School in Indiana, with college football offers from the Hoosiers and Central Michigan. “My dad died when I was 16, and now I have a 16-year-old,” Pollard said. “I have a wife that loves me. I want to see my kids grow up. How dare I take that opportunity away from them?
“My feelings didn’t change, I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to do it for my family.”
Scot and Dawn Pollard in their temporary apartment near Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., Wednesday, March 6, 2024. Scot, an 11-year National Basketball Association veteran, received a heart transplant at the hospital in February.
Family values were part of his upbringing in the Mormon church. He’s not religious, but Pollard looks after his loved ones. He bummed rides for three years at KU before finally purchasing a rusty 1969 green drop-top Cadillac that he nicknamed “Marvin.” Lawrence locals might have seen the car as one of his jokes. But at $900, it was actually all he could afford. He sent federal Pell Grant money to his mother during the season; he also sent her cash he earned in the summer by working basketball camps or washing golf carts.
Pollard was loyal to his teams, too. Williams checked on him after hearing he was on multiple transplant lists. They started talking about his surprise 3-pointer on KU senior day.
“When we hugged on the bench, someone took a picture of that. It was one of my favorite photos,” Williams said. “I had it in my office at North Carolina for 18 seasons, and when I retired, I sent him that copy.
“He told me he still had it in his bedroom.”
How Scot Pollard received a heart transplant at Vanderbilt
Pollard is the tallest patient Shah has given a transplant.
His new heart needed to be strong, from a male likely 6-1 or taller. That shrunk the donor pool, as did Pollard’s blood Type O; his body couldn’t accept any other blood type.
His heart arrived 10 days after his first appointment at Vanderbilt, quicker than Pollard expected. Vanderbilt’s extensive tests were a factor in saving his life because they revealed more about how poor his condition had gotten. The results elevated him to Status 2 on the transplant list, second in priority only to Status 1, reserved for those who are critically ill or on life support.
Another reason his heart arrived quickly was the Vanderbilt Transplant Center. It conducted in the world last year and has mastered the technique of utilizing hearts from as far as 3,000 miles away, Shah said, making it open to hearts from across the country.
The tragic timing, too, is a complicated but real part of the heart transplant process. “You’re waiting for some other family to have the worst day ever,” Shah said.
On Feb. 16, a helicopter carrying Pollard’s heart landed at Vanderbilt.
There’s a harrowing moment before a heart transplant, Shah said, “when we take the old heart out and in someone’s chest there’s this big, empty hole. We always look up and everybody in the room is like, ‘Man, I hope that heart gets here soon and that heart works.’ ”
Why Scot Pollard sang Tony Bennett after heart surgery
Pollard woke up after five hours of surgery, and in a hospital bed minutes from Music Row, he opened his throat.
“I started singing a song. ‘I left my heaaaart in San Fran-Nashville,’ ” he said, mimicking notes from Tony Bennett’s jazzy 1953 standard. “I was talking like a maniac, which I hadn’t done in years because I was so tired.”
Pollard will move out of his and Dawn’s temporary Vanderbilt apartment this week. The rest of his family is waiting in Indiana. Excerpts from Bennett’s song actually ring true: High on a hill, (my heart) calls to me / My love waits there / When I come home to you / Your golden sun will shine for me.
Feb 25, 2012; Lawrence, KS, USA; Former Kansas Jayhawks player Scot Pollard speaks to the fans before the game against the Missouri Tigers at Allen Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports
When Pollard is asked a question about “his” heart now, he needs clarification: “This one or my old one?” He did leave his heart in Nashville. He also found it.
He started writing a 350-word iPhone note after surgery to eventually send as a letter to his donor’s family. He isn’t legally allowed to identify himself in it but can give his first name and where he lives.
“Mostly what it says right now is, you’ve given me an incredible gift,” Pollard said. “We’re going to be pushing for donorship, and your big man is all we know. (He) has saved my life and we’d love for you to be part of the journey for the rest of our lives to connect, to know more about him, to know more about me.
“To know this heart isn’t going to waste.”
Reach sports writer Tyler Palmateer at [email protected] and on the X platform, formerly Twitter, @tpalmateer83.