Scot Pollard on being placed on a heart transplant list: `I'm scared to death'

The former NBA player (and Pacer) is going to die if he doesn't get a new heart sometime relatively soon. This is his heartbreaking story.

Scot Pollard, a San Diego-area kid, was finishing up his high school surfing class the last time he saw his father.

Pollard, the former Pacers/NBA player, had just walked up the steps from the beach when he saw his father’s white City of Solana Beach truck, which he drove for his job. Pollard knew his father, Pearl Icean, a big man who had been inducted into the Utah Basketball Hall of Fame, had heart issues; in fact, he’d been on the heart transplant list for almost a year. It had been a tough time – Pearl would fall asleep on the couch and sweat – but he insisted on continuing to work. When he saw his 16-year-old son, he told him to get back to class.

“Take care,” Pearl Pollard said. “I’ll see you later.”

Shortly thereafter, the elder Pollard’s heart stopped. He was driving at the time, he passed out and his car hit several parked vehicles; luckily, nobody was hurt, but Pearl was gone. He died immediately from heart failure.

Pearl, a giant of a man at 6-10 and 380 pounds, was 54 years old. A virus had attacked his oversized heart.

Scot is 48, and now his heart is failing, too, a virus having impacted his heart as well. A few days back, he shared that information with a wider world, going on X to announce that he is on a heart transplant list. He is on a list locally and will soon add his name to lists in Nashville and Chicago, where he hopes he will have better odds. But he knows the score…

“My odds of getting a heart?” he said in a phone interview this weekend. “My local surgeon said it was like winning the lottery because of my size (6-11, 300 pounds), my age (48) and the fact I’m pretty healthy otherwise. And I have the most common blood type, so there are more people in line with the same blood type.

“I’ve never been scared in my life. I always worked harder than everybody around me, always prepared harder, so I was never scared because of that preparation and work ethic. Well, you can’t prepare for this. There’s not a damn thing I can do about this. We’ve tried everything and nothing has worked. So yes, I’m scared to death.”

He has a pacemaker. He has a defibrillator. He’s had ablations. He has more pills than he can store.  None of it has worked. He feels the decline. He can’t walk down the street, or make it up the stairs in his home, without taking a break and catching his breath. Heart disease is, first and foremost, genetic. Pollard has two older siblings who have pacemakers and a defibrillator. His mother’s father also died from heart issues.