INDIANAPOLIS — UPDATE: Scot Pollard's wife, Dawn, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, at 1:23 p.m. Friday, Feb. 16 that a "donor gave the most amazing gift of life and we are forever grateful."
Dawn posted photos of her shaving Scot's head and beard, and said, "It's go time! Please keep the prayers coming for Scot, the surgeons, for the donor and his family who lost their loved one."
The waiting is the hardest part for Scot Pollard. The former NBA player, who played three seasons with the Indiana Pacers, is on a heart transplant list and spends much of his time waiting for a call, fearing it may not come.
"I've always had that in the back of my head that I probably wasn't going to see 70," Pollard said.
Pollard turns 49 in February. Doctors say his failing heart doesn't have many birthdays left.
"He's obviously extremely sick. He's amongst the sickest on hearts because he's on the transplant list," said Dr. Sunit-Preet Chaudhry, a cardiologist at Ascension St. Vincent.
Chaudhry said Pollard acquired a virus three years ago, and that triggered a genetic heart condition.
Pollard has had three ablations and multiple medicines, and now as a last resort, is one of 66 adults on the heart transplant list in Indiana.
For a match, Pollard will need an uncommonly large donor heart.
"I'm 6'11" and 300 (pounds). So I'm a big man," Pollard said. "It's particularly hard to me to think about that because my dad died on the transplant list because of his size."
His father, Pearl Icean Pollard, was 54 years old, stood 6 feet, 9 inches tall and weighed 380 pounds. He played Division I basketball at the University of Utah.
Scot was 16 when his dad died, and his worst fear is repeating family history.
"I have a 16-year-old, and my dad died was I was 16. I have a 7-year-old," Pollard said.
Pollard knows losing a parent too soon can be too much.
"I think I smiled more than anybody on the basketball court my entire life, my entire career — high school, college and NBA — that was my mask because I was angry. I was angry the entire time because my dad never got to see me succeed, and that drove me," Pollard said. "That is when I got serious, when my dad died ... that is when I decided that's what I was going to do, and there was nobody that was going to stop me."
He played college ball for the University of Kansas and then was selected 19th overall in the 1997 NBA Draft by the Detroit Pistons. He played in the league for 11 years with the Sacramento Kings, Pacers, Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics.
"I liked playing for all of them," Pollard said and Sacramento was a favorite. "I was young. I was healthy. I was more of a contributor to that team than any other team, I was there longer than anywhere else. We had great success there, we had great chemistry, great teammates. We all had each other’s backs, all of us, every one of us, it was very unique."
Pollard is a showman, performing on the court, sporting splashy mohawks and a Fu Manchu. After his playing days, his celebrity status and big personality landed him a spot on "Survivor" in Cambodia.
Fans adoringly called him "Samurai Scot."
"You can get a lot of stones thrown at you, especially when you are a public figure and you are an NBA player, fans are mean, and when you are on 'Survivor,' fans are meaner. Social media is a beast," Pollard said.
But the platforms are also a place where you can break your own news, and that's what Scot did recently when he posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
It led to an outpouring of support.
"He's got a lot of people that love him and want to see him heal and get better, and we all want that," said his wife, Dawn.
Nationwide, 3,365 adults are waiting for a heart.
They're organized by seven status levels, with one being the sickest. Scot is now a status 4.
"A lot of stars have to align, but we are confident that we or another institution will be able to help him get to his ultimate goal, which will be a heart transplant," Chaudhry said.
Pollard is the father of four children, three with his first wife and one with Dawn. He wants them to remember a happy and healthy dad.
"What do I want them to see? Not this, I'm not me, this is awful, it's embarrassing, it's emasculating. I don't have much of a purpose right now. I just sit around," Pollard said.
It is a role-reversal for the couple, after Scot cared for Dawn during her breast cancer fight five years ago.
"This girl had a double mastectomy because of cancer. So, we've done 'with sickness and health' and again, we were expecting to do this in our 80s," Pollard said.
Together, they wait.
"The phone call might come today, it might not come at all, and I can't do anything about that, and that is why I am terrified right now. You can't prep for this," Pollard said.
Pollard said the anger that fueled his basketball career is gone.
"I was able to let go of most of it when I stopped playing because I didn't have anything to prove to my dad anymore," Pollard said.
Now, he misses the little things.
"In the last three years, I've gone from walking an hour a day with my wife to I can't walk down the street. I can't walk up the stairs without taking a break. It's pretty fast and sobering," Pollard said.
To improve his odds, Pollard is hoping to get on transplant lists in Tennessee and Illinois, too. It's a tedious process, and this player is all in.
"I always had a saying, life is short, get at it, and I think I've done that pretty well ... I'm doing as much as I can to not leave my family too soon, doing everything I can to be around for them longer," Pollard said.
Click here to become a donor.