Former NBA and Sacramento Kings player Scot Pollard shares his emotional journey of a heart transplant and his father’s legacy in ESPN’s E60 documentary “Heart of Pearl.” By ESPN E60
While hooked up to tubes at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on Feb. 6, 2024, Scot Pollard couldn’t help but look back.
Doctors had decided to admit Pollard, 50, who had been experiencing heart failure for three years prior, at the hospital until he was able to get a heart transplant. Both Pollard and his wife, Dawn Pollard, thought they were going home that night, but instead it was the first of a lengthy stay in Nashville.
One of Vanderbilt’s cardiologists used the fingers of one hand wiggling faintly to describe the state of Pollard’s heartbeat, as the former Kings center showed to the audience in a media preview of an upcoming ESPN E60 documentary “Heart of Pearl,” which is focused on Pollard’s recovery journey. To describe a normal heartbeat, Pollard said the doctor made a steady and strong two-handed motion.
Roughly 24 years earlier, Scot Pollard’s father, Pearl Pollard, was given the exact same description by a doctor while his son watched.
The next year, Pearl Pollard ate age 54 died of a heart attack while driving. At the time, he was still on the donor waiting list.
Documentary shows father-son parallel
Pollard said he knew the donor list was a “death sentence” for his father due to his large 6-8, 380-pound frame that made it difficult to find a match.
While not weighing as much, Pollard, who stands at 6-foot-11, is even taller than his father, who was a star basketball player at Utah in the late 1950s. As he laid in his hospital bed on the first night of his stay, Pollard questioned whether he would make it.
“When you’re sitting here waiting for a new heart, the unknown can be terrifying,” Pollard said while lying on a hospital bed, as shown in the documentary. “When you think of all of the things my body requires for a heart, there’s not that many people and so, I may not get one.”
”Heart of Pearl,” which draws parallels between father and son throughout, will be released Sunday — which is also Father’s Day. It’ll first air at 10 a.m. Pacific on ESPN and be available for streaming on ESPN+ afterward.
Basketball footage of both Scot and Pearl Pollard is woven through the story.
Pearl Pollard, who earned the nickname “Poison” for his dominance in the paint for Utah, averaged 10.5 points and roughly eight rebounds per game in college and became a local legend.
‘It wasn’t about me’
Despite Pearl Pollard not continuing his playing career after Utah, he would often play pickup games with his kids. But by the time Scot Pollard, the youngest child in the family, was old enough and wanted to play against his father, he was unable to due to his condition.
In the documentary, Scot Pollard admitted that he was mad at his father when he was younger because he thought he might have lived longer had he weighed less, giving him more donor options.
Near the beginning of the documentary, footage showed Scot Pollard crying with his mom and sister at his high school basketball senior night. Pearl died before he could attend it.
One of the final scenes in “Heart of Pearl” follows Scot and Dawn Pollard as they attend high school football senior night for their son, Ozzy Pollard, as the former King talked about the importance of being present in both small and large moments.
“When it was decision time of whether to go through with the surgery or not, I selfishly thought about not taking it,” Scot Pollard said in the documentary. “Then I spoke with my wife and she reminded me that it wasn’t about me.”
Basketball career was inspired by father
Over time, Pearl Pollard’s youngest son channeled his anger, which was mostly directed towards the loss of his father so early, into his basketball career, he said in the documentary.
“The real reason I was ever successful with basketball is because my dad died,” Pollard said in the documentary. “That was the catalyst. My dad passing sharpened everything inside of me.”
Former Sacramento Kings star Scot Pollard, right, comforts wife Dawn Pollard as they talk at their home in Carmel, Ind., on Dec. 12, 2024, about his heart transplant earlier in the year. Christine Tannous IndyStar/USA Today Network
Scot Pollard, who wore number 31 to honor his dad, was a part of the 61-win 2001-02 Kings team that had the best record in Western Conference before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Conference Finals as well as the 2000-01 and 2002-03 teams that won north of 55 games and made second-round playoff runs. In his five seasons with Sacramento he averaged about 6 points and six rebounds in 272 games.
Scot Pollard later won a championship with the Boston Celtics in his 10th and final season in the league, in which he played only 22 games.
“The Kings fans are hard-working, loyal, energetic and expressive and that’s all Scot,” Jodi Bacon, who worked at KHTK Kings Radio during Scot Pollard’s time with the team, said in the documentary. “They accepted all of his quirkiness.”
‘The guilt is still there’
After the first potential heart was rejected by the hospital — something that Vanderbilt doctors said happens less than 5% of the time — on Scot Pollard’s 49th birthday, Feb. 12, 2024 he stayed positive and received the heart of Casey Angell, a Texas native who was 45 at the time, on Feb. 16, 2024.
Angell was described as a “good old boy” by his sister in a previous Sacramento Bee story on Pollard’s transplant. In a letter read by Scot Pollard during the documentary, Angell’s family said he would’ve wanted his heart to help someone, had he had the choice.
A focus of the documentary is Scot Pollard grappling with the guilt of taking someone else’s heart and a tearful meeting with Angell’s family.
“Someone is going to die to give me life,” Scot Pollard said in the documentary while in preparation to receive the heart. “They’re being a hero and they’re willingly doing it. That is how I have processed it. But the guilt is still there … I’ve got to make sure that when I get this gift, that I make it worth that person’s while.
“That’s going to be a burden on my life for the rest of my life.”