Heart of Pearl

On February 16, 2024, directly in front of an E60 camera, the heart Pollard was born with 49 years earlier took its last beat, after it was extracted from his chest cavity. Ten days prior, the 11-year NBA veteran, granted full access to E60 as he was admitted into Vanderbilt University Medical Center's ICU with advanced heart failure. The task was to document a story to which nobody, not even Pollard's doctors, knew the ending.

For months prior to that, Pollard had been waiting for a new heart. More than most people, Pollard and his family understood the process—and the stakes. When Pollard was 16, his father Pearl collapsed and died from heart failure—after waiting in vain on the transplant list. "Poison" Pearl had been a star basketball player himself, at the University of Utah—and, like his son, Pearl was a big man, nearly seven feet tall, which made finding a heart for him nearly impossible.

As Scot speaks openly about with Schaap, Pearl's death was the defining moment in Scot's life, filling him with anger and fueling his desire and fierceness on the court. At the University of Kansas and then in the NBA, he stood out for his competitive drive. Now, what he wanted most was to see history not repeat itself, to live, to be present for his wife and children.