BOSTON — At 6-foot-11, Scot Pollard’s size helped him play more than a decade in the NBA, earning him a championship ring with the 2008 Boston Celtics.
Now it may be killing him.
Pollard needs a heart transplant, an already dire predicament that is made more difficult by the fact so few donors can provide him with a pump big and strong enough to supply blood to his extra large body. He was admitted to intensive care at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Tuesday, and he will wait there until a donor surfaces who was big enough to be a match.
“I’m staying here until I get a heart,” he said in a text message to The Associated Press on Wednesday night. “My heart got weaker. (Doctors) agree this is my best shot at getting a heart quicker.”
At nearly 7 feet tall and with a playing weight of 260 pounds, Pollard’s size rules out most potential donors for a heart to replace the one that — due to a genetic condition that was likely triggered by a virus he contracted in 2021 — has been beating an extra 10,000 times per day. Half of his siblings have the same condition — as did his father, who died at 54, when Scot was 16.
“That was an immediate wake-up call,” Pollard said in a recent telephone interview. “You don’t see a lot of old (7-) footers walking around. So I’ve known that my whole life, just because I had that seared into my brain as a 16-year-old, that — yeah, being tall is great, but I’m not going to see 80.”
A 1997 first-round draft pick after helping Kansas reach the NCAA Sweet 16 in four straight seasons, Pollard was a useful big man off the bench for much of an NBA career that stretched over 11 years and five teams. He played 55 seconds in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ trip to the NBA Finals in 2007, and won it all the following year with the Celtics despite a season-ending ankle injury in February.
Pollard retired after that season, then dabbled in broadcasting and acting. He was a contestant on the 32nd season of…
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