Heart of Pearl – 11-year NBA veteran Scot Pollard and the emergency transplant that saved his life

Jun 15, 2025, 08:00 AM ET

LAST OCTOBER, SEVEN months after a heart transplant saved his life, 11-year NBA veteran Scot Pollard was back in the hospital. But this time, the visit was not for him.

Ozzy Pollard, the third of his four children, was a senior and played tight end for the high school team. Midway through the season, he’d injured his ACL and meniscus and needed an operation to repair both.

The Pollards were well prepared to manage the stress of surgery; Scot had spent the past three years fighting genetic heart disease.

During his playing days at the University of Kansas, and his time in the NBA, Scot became something of a cult favorite across the league, gaining the adoration of fans for his one-of-a-kind personality, carousel of flamboyant hairstyles and dogged competitiveness.

More than a decade into retirement, though, Scot’s spirit slowly faded, his days taken up by doctor’s visits, tests and questions.

At 48 years old, a man who just a few years ago had been a public face of peak physical might and condition was in active heart failure.

“I do remember feeling like, ‘If this is it, I’m going to be OK,'” he said. “‘But if it’s not, I’ve got a lot to do.”

He paused.

“I’m really glad I have a lot to do.'”

Scot received a new heart on February 16, 2024.

Organ donation operates under a strict standard of anonymity. Neither donor family nor recipient is provided details about the other, unless the transplant patient chooses to initiate contact following the procedure.

Scot spent five months reflecting on his transplant experience before deciding to send a letter to his anonymous donor family.

In it, he called his donor a hero.

My name is Scot, he wrote. I live in Indiana and I’m writing this letter to express mine and my family’s unending appreciation for your loved one’s gift of life. My wife, myself, our four children, our extended family and friends are all forever grateful!

He continued.

We would love the opportunity to meet at some point if you’re amenable to that idea. We want to let you know that your loved one’s heart is going to be loved and cared for and will give love back.

We have already begun raising donor awareness in our community and are going nationwide. I’ve already connected with multiple donor networks in various communities to assist them in promoting becoming a donor.

Your loved one is our hero and he will live on forever through me and our efforts of getting more people to be selfless heroes like him.

If you don’t feel comfortable responding, I completely understand. I just wanted you to know my lifelong appreciation for him. He truly is my hero.

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Scot passed the letter on to his hospital, which then passed it on to the donor’s hospital, which then passed it on to the donor’s family.

It was up to them to decide how they wanted to reply, or if they wanted to at all.

“I can very much understand how a lot of people would say, ‘I don’t want to know that person that got a kidney, or lungs, or eyes. It’s just too much,'” Scot said. “And so the transplant programs prep you for that, that most people do not respond.”

Days passed, then weeks. His hopes to hear back from the family who saved him dimmed.

Three months after he’d sent his letter, as his family sat in the hospital with Ozzy, Scot checked his email.

They’d written him back.

ON FEBRUARY 6, 2024, Scot Pollard was dying.

The day before, he and his wife, Dawn, had arrived at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, for a three-day heart transplant evaluation.

Scot had already been registered on transplant lists in Indianapolis and Chicago. He was aiming to get on the list in Nashville — 300 miles south of the Pollards’ Carmel, Indiana, home — hoping another transplant region meant a greater opportunity for a match.

Dr. Jonathan Menachem, a cardiologist at the hospital, placed his hands on Scot’s wrist.

“Your pulse is slow,” he told him. “Is it always pretty slow?”

Scot then laid down on a bed, where Menachem took his stethoscope and placed it on Scot’s chest.

“Do you get short of breath just laying like this?” he asked him.

Scot closed his eyes and nodded.

“Seeing someone lay down like that and getting so short of breath that quick is concerning,” Menachem said.

The Pollards went to Vanderbilt in February of 2024 for a three-day evaluation of his heart, thinking they’d go back home to Carmel, Indiana. But once doctors there saw him, they determined his condition was far more dire than anyone had imagined. ESPN

Scot was in end-stage heart failure. He was admitted to the intensive care unit, and an emergency search for a transplant began.

“He was filled with fluid and didn’t have enough blood flow going around his body,” Menachem said. “They thought they were going home to Indiana.

“We looked at each other,” Menachem said of him and his colleague as they reviewed Scot’s prognosis. “We were like, ‘This guy cannot go home.'”

Scot’s heart was failing. He’d been suffering from cardiomyopathy, a disease that makes it difficult for the heart muscle to pump. With more strain on the muscle, and more blood required for his large frame, he weakened by the day.

“I’m really attached to this heart,” he said in the hospital. “I feel like it’s the best one. That’s the one I was born with. And the biggest fear is that the next one isn’t going to be good enough.”

As he prepared for additional tests, various nodes were attached to his chest and fingers, a heart monitor’s looming beeps serving as a second-by-second reminder of what was to come.

“I’m not really scared of anything,” Scot said. “Now, when you’re sitting here, waiting for a new heart, the unknown can be terrifying.”

SCOT INHERITED HIS height from his father, Pearl, who stood at 6-foot-8. And when he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, he realized that was inherited, too.

In 1952, Pearl’s father moved the family from Montana to Utah with the hope of making his son a boxer. But, as Scot tells it, the basketball coach got to Pearl first.

Pearl played center for Jordan High School, just south of Salt Lake City, and was quickly christened “Poison” Pollard for his deadly hook shot. He won back-to-back state high school championships with the Beetdiggers, setting the state tournament scoring record in 1955.

Earlier that year, he appeared alongside Wilt Chamberlain in a Life magazine spread featuring the tallest high school basketball players in the country.

Pearl went on to play for the University of Utah from 1956 through 1959 and was the team’s leading scorer for the 1958-59 season.

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“He was a giant of a man in every single way possible,” Scot said.

When Scot was 12, the family moved from Utah to San Diego, where he first noticed his father’s health begin to decline. Three years later, Pearl was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, at the age of 53. He was put on the heart transplant list but needed an organ donor similar in size.

Given his towering height, finding one would be nearly impossible.

“We knew it was a death sentence,” Scot, who was the youngest of six children, said. “I was just thinking, ‘God, I’m going to grow up without a dad.'”

One morning in October 1991, Scot was making his way up from the beach after surfing in gym class. Pearl happened to drive by in his white, city-issued pickup truck and stopped for a quick chat with his son.

A few hours later, Scot received a phone call from a friend. He said Pearl’s truck had crashed into a country club parking lot and paramedics were on the scene.

Pearl had suffered a heart attack behind the wheel.

He died on the transplant list.

Scot was 16. He was the last of his family to see his father alive.

Pollard played 10 years in the NBA, and became a fan-favorite for his various hairstyles and relentlessly competitive play. Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo

SCOT NEVER FORGOT his father’s fate. Following a healthy playing career, he continued to check his heart regularly.

In January 2021, he visited the doctor for an annual physical. This appointment, like all the others before it, went without concern.

One month later, though, Scot received a flu shot, and he says doctors believe it released a “genetic anomaly” that triggered his heart failure.

“A couple days later, I got the flu,” Scot said, “and it attacked my heart. I couldn’t walk across the room.”

“We’re never going to know for sure what happened,” Menachem said, “but he clearly was predisposed to having a heart that was not going to function well for his entire life.”

What came next was an increasingly frightening three-year stretch of appointments and treatments and hospital visits, culminating in the realization that he would need a heart transplant to survive.

Doubt that he’d find one, and guilt that he deserved one, overwhelmed him.

Someone would have to die to give me life.

Scot had experienced and lived more than most, he thought: a meaningful college basketball career that had led to an admirable NBA career, which had helped him build his beloved family and pursue their dreams. Surely there were stronger candidates for this chance at life-saving surgery.

Of the former, Dawn, too, was skeptical. But she needed to convince her husband of the fallacy of the latter, reminding him of his responsibilities as a husband and father, of how much they still had to live.

He listened — and eventually agreed.

“How dare I even think about doing the same thing to my kids that my dad unintentionally did to me?” Scot thought.

“He didn’t want me to grow up without a dad to be there and teach [me],” Ozzy said. “And I love him for that.”

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The next step was finding a heart strong enough to support his body.

“You can’t put a Ford Festiva engine in an F-150 and think it’s going to work well,” Menachem said.

While Pearl died waiting for a same-sized donor, Scot had hope. Medical technology had advanced to allow for greater variation in size.

On Scot’s 49th birthday, his sixth day in the Vanderbilt Intensive Care Unit, he received word of a potential donor. He called family members to the hospital. He shaved his head and beard in preparation for the surgery.

But doctors determined the prospective heart wouldn’t be viable.

Another option arose soon after.

That, too, was declined.

William Angell was 12 when his dad, Casey, died and donated his heart to Pollard. “Just think of your daddy the way he was,” Pamela told her son. Courtesy: Pamela Angell’s Facebook

PAMELA ANGELL AND Megan Tyra were sitting in a hospital in East Texas when they were told they had 14 days to make the most devastating decision of their lives.

Pamela’s husband, Casey, had been intubated, no longer able to breathe on his own.

Casey and Pamela had met in 2009 while working at Walmart. He was someone who could “talk a stranger’s ear off,” she says, and he often did.

When Pamela was pregnant with their son, William, Casey found a new position as a forklift operator. But exposure to elements on the job — in addition to a history of smoking — had taken a toll. In February 2024, a bout of pneumonia had sent the 45-year-old to the hospital, where he drifted in and out of consciousness.

Days went by. Then a week. Then more. Angell had failed to show any signs of improvement — or life. On day 11, Pamela and Megan, Casey’s sister, made the decision to let him go.

Shortly after, the hospital’s organ donation liaison approached them.

“He said, ‘Look, guys, Casey had a really big heart,'” Megan said.

“Yeah, we know,” Megan’s husband, Clint, responded.

“He said, ‘No, man, you don’t understand. He physically had a big heart.'” Megan said. “And I’m like, ‘Is that important?’

He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s important.'”

Angell was a hearty 5-foot-11. In 1991, that would not have been large enough to save Pearl Pollard. But in 2024, it would be large enough to save Scot.

Pamela and Megan agreed to the anonymous process of organ donation — and watched Angell’s heart leave the hospital.

“You’re losing your best friend,” Pamela said, “but somebody else is gaining your best friend, in a way.”

On the morning of February 16, as Angell’s heart traveled from Texas to Tennessee, Vanderbilt staff began to prepare Scot for transplant surgery.

Physicians gathered the endless tubes and wires tethering him to his hospital room, and rearranged them for the short journey to the operating room.

Amid the steady heart-monitor beeps, Scot began his goodbyes.

“Who’s my favorite fourth kid?” Scot said, hugging his youngest child, Icean.

“Me?” Icean said.

Scot leaned in. “That’s right,” he said, putting the pair forehead to forehead. “You.”

Then Dawn took her husband’s head in her hands and bent over the bed for a kiss. “I love you,” she said, smiling through her tears.

“I love you forever,” Scot said, running his fingers through her long, dark hair. “I love you forever,” she told him.

Before he was wheeled off to surgery, Pollard said his goodbyes. “I love you forever,” he told his wife, Dawn. “I love you forever,” she said, holding his face in her hands. ESPN

Scot was pushed through the halls of the hospital, Dawn following as far as she was allowed. She squeezed her husband’s hand before he passed through a set of double doors, beyond her grasp.

“I was thinking, ‘OK, what if he doesn’t wake up?’ she said later. “That’s when it finally hit me.”

“I was thinking what life would possibly be like … without him.”

Just after 11 a.m., Scot was taken into surgery.

At 1:08 p.m., a black SUV pulled into the Adult Emergency Entrance at the hospital. In the trunk, doctors pulled out a white cooler and raced inside. Inside a smaller plastic container was Angell’s heart.

At 1:16, doctors removed Scot’s heart from his body.

“Now, there’s no heart in there,” said Dr. Ashish Shah, one of the heart surgeons who performed the operation. “There’s a giant, gaping hole, and when that old heart came out, you see an enormous, unhappy organ.”

Thirteen minutes later, his new heart was sewn in and blood was restored to it.

By 5 p.m., the procedure was complete.

“In some respects,” Shah said, “it was just the right heart for him.”

ONE MID-OCTOBER EVENING last year, Scot and Dawn stood on the sideline of the Carmel High School football field. It was senior night. As the sun set behind the stands, they waited to hear Ozzy’s name called.

It was just two weeks after his knee operation, so he couldn’t play, but Ozzy walked across the field in celebration, his dad by his side.

“It’s like I have my dad back from when I was younger,” Ozzy said.

Yet the Pollards are keenly aware that their relief, their joy, had come at an enormous expense.

On the day of Ozzy’s surgery, inside the hospital room, Scot checked his email. And there it was, the response he so hoped he’d get.

As soon as Pamela received Scot’s letter, she called Megan and they decided to write back, interested in learning more about the man carrying Casey’s heart — and sharing more about the man from whom it came.

Scot read the letter aloud.

Dear Scot, thank you so much for reaching out to us.

Scot, you warmed our hearts with your kind words concerning your donor, who was loved beyond measure. February 16, 2024, was an incredibly hard day for those of us that loved your donor, Casey.

When we knew that we were going to have to let him go, and were approached about organ donation, there was never a pause or a doubt that Casey would have wanted to help.

So the answer was simple, and it was a yes.

Scot’s voice began to break.

He continued to read.

Casey was a loving husband, dad, uncle, and the best baby brother anyone could ask for. Even though he was the baby, he towered over us all.

Thank you for caring for that big heart of his. And we are grateful to know he is loved and will continue to give love. It means the world to us. He has inspired people in his own family to donate and be a hero like him.

And we, as his family, though small, would love to meet you whenever you are ready to do so.

Megan wrote that Angell was a “gentle giant” who was always happy to help those in need. “We are blessed to know that even in our greatest tragedy we stayed true to who he was,” she wrote, “and we are so glad that because of our hero, you can continue to be a blessing to your family and others.”

The families first spoke on the phone on November 9, on what would have been Angell’s 46th birthday. After exchanging texts, they decided to meet in person.

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On March 17, 2025, Scot and Dawn were in Lindale, Texas, a small town about 90 miles east of Dallas.

As the pair stepped out of their hotel room, Dawn took her husband’s hand.

“Ready?” she asked softly, smiling up at him. “Ready,” he responded.

Hand-in-hand, they walked down the hall toward the room where Angell’s family was waiting.

As they turned the final corner, they spotted the family through an open door, breaking into nervous laughter before exchanging hugs with Pamela, William, Megan and Clint.

“Hi, gang,” Scot said, before he and Dawn extended their arms.

Scot learned William was 12 when his father died, and that he was “the love of [his father’s] life.”

“We’re grateful that Scot’s here, with Casey’s heart,” Pamela said. “And William has another person to look up to, as a father figure.”

William told stories of their afternoons together fishing, or watching horror movies, describing his dad as gentle and a giant, too. Casey and Scot both had dragon tattoos, William’s Japanese zodiac sign.

“There was a connection there that I felt,” Scot said. “I know how that feels as a child, to lose your father.”

“You look like your dad,” Dawn told William.

“Copy and pasted, that’s how we put it,” Megan replied.

Pamela showed Dawn and Scot Casey’s wedding ring, which she wears on a chain around her neck, and shared the story of how they met. Megan explained that while she and Casey had other siblings, the two of them were the closest.

“He was my bubba,” she said.

Before leaving for lunch together, Pamela took out a stethoscope she’d brought.

Scot stood and unbuttoned his shirt while Pamela positioned it right on his chest.

As she listened to the beating heart inside of him, her eyes filled with tears.

Megan went next. “My turn,” she said.

She softly placed the stethoscope just to the right of a lengthy, vertical scar, a lasting reminder of what was given — and what was lost.

With Scot looking down at her, she bowed her head and listened.

“Hey, Bubba,” she said, weeping.

For this year’s Indianapolis 500, Pollard was named the grand marshal of the local parade. He invited his donor’s family, the Angells, to join. Courtesy of the Pollard family

ON MEMORIAL DAY weekend, under sunny skies, the Pollards, Angells, and Tyras sailed through the streets of downtown Indianapolis, waving to an enthusiastic crowd.

A year after Scot’s transplant, he had been named grand marshal of the Indy 500 Festival Parade and invited his heart donor’s family to join him on the float.

It had been only a few months since their first in-person meeting, but Megan says getting to know the Pollards has helped her family heal. Today, at 50, Scot is doing well, but his future is fraught with unpredictability.

He’s the tallest transplant recipient in the history of Vanderbilt’s Medical Center, and doctors aren’t sure how his life will progress. Still, whatever doubt had coursed through Scot prior to the surgery has now diminished entirely.

“The fact that I get to be Dad for as long as I can was completely worth it,” he said.

While Scot says his doctors do not think the new heart will be affected by the genetic disorder, they do believe his children are at risk of heart disease.

But in the meantime, he will be there to support them on their own journeys. Ozzy, 17, will soon begin his freshman year at Marian University, a school just 30 minutes from home. Icean, 9, will enter fourth grade in the fall.

And in Texas, William, 13, plans to play for the junior high football team, just like his dad.

Fate fused the paths of the Pollards and the Angells — each, in their own way, helping the other mend.

“What we hope for moving forward,” Scot said, “is just that I can keep living a good life because of their gift.”

As Megan looked out at the cheering crowd, she thought of Casey.

“It’s an honor to let everyone know how proud we are of him, and who he was, and what a good man he was,” she said of her brother. “We miss him every day, but Scot helps with that.”

ESPN E60’s Jeremy Schaap, Dan Lindberg, and John Minton contributed to this story.