Q&A: Scot Pollard
Sorry for the watermark, this is the best I could do
For anyone who grew up with Kansas basketball in the ‘90s, Scot Pollard is a cult figure. Part of Roy Williams’ Cali clique along with Jacque Vaughn, Paul Pierce and (eventually) Jerod Haase, Pollard threw in 10 PPG, 8 RPG and almost three blocks a game for the 1996-97 Jayhawks, often cited as the best Kansas team of all time*. While that group lost to Arizona in the Sweet 16, Pollard’s impact on those Jayhawks—and his presence in the Lawrence community after his NBA career was over—won’t be forgotten.
*at least the best Roy Williams team
After an 11-year career in the NBA with five teams, Pollard has plotted a pretty novel post-playing career as a reality show villain, an actor for a director who has won an Oscar, and now a real estate agent. I caught up with Scot to talk about all that, plus more on his relationship with Kansas basketball, Lawrence and social media in 2020—Pollard has a fairly rambunctious Twitter account.
When did the real estate thing start? Was there a 💡💡💡-style moment, or did it happen more organically?
It was a long road to get here. But I've bought and sold houses in seven different states. I've purchased a couple of commercial properties and sold those. And with respect to the job —now knowing what it takes to be a real estate broker—I do have to apologize for being a difficult to previous brokers.
With all those transactions, I just saw money going out when I sold. When you buy, you're not paying the fees. The seller always pays the fees. But when you're selling, you're like, “Man, they didn't really do a whole lot. And yet, I'm seeing this big chunk out to the buyer agent and the seller.” That was the feeling all along.
Up until just a couple of years ago, I just felt like I was too busy or it was too difficult to get my license or didn't have the time. My wife and I discussed it and we were both like, “You know what, let's just try it.” We found out that is the three-week course here in Indiana. It's a very intense course—90 hours over three weeks. We started the coursework, and then on Tuesday of the first week, TNT called and said, “Hey, can you come do the Final Four?” This is when Kansas was in the Final Four against Villanova.
At the time, I thought, well, this is guaranteed money over maybe money with real estate. So I went down to San Antonio and did that. We dropped out of the class.
Later, I tried to do it online and then my wife found time in my schedule where I could go to class. And so I got my license and interviewed some people along the way. I found a partner—Joe Kemplar—that I really like that lives here in the same neighborhood I live in. It's called the Village of West Clay. He's been a broker for 15 years now. Last year—and my first year with him—we did $14.9 million in transactions.
I have to quantify that—we're not Chicago. We're not a big market like that. But Indianapolis has 8,000 agents in our area. I don't have the number for 2019 for our ranking, but I can confidently say we're in the top 300. So out of 8,000, that's pretty good. And also to further quantify that, that number includes zero million-dollar-plus properties. We averaged about 440k per transaction.
The point I'm trying to make is, as a rookie, I had high goals for myself for my personal transactions. And I didn’t meet those because I had unrealistic expectations for myself. But after a year, I think the other 8,000 agents would say I killed it. So I'm very happy with what I did in my first year.
The path to this was a lack of desire of paying transaction fees on my own transactions.
How much of your pro athlete mindset bleeds into the world of real estate? It has to be insanely competitive.
I have to give a lot of credit to my partner Joe. He's my mentor and that’s a big part of it.
For most people, buying a property is one the biggest financial transactions—if not the biggest— they will ever make. And it's hard to trust somebody to guide you along the way. With a lot of real estate brokers, when it comes to a sale, they feel like they're the gods, that they're the chief or the navigator of this task. In reality you're just a guy using your own expertise to guide someone into making their decision. You're not making any decisions for them. You're just trying to help them with your expertise to, to find what, what is right for them, that the price point is right for them for sell. They have to be comfortable with your intelligence level. And I think that that's part of it.
I probably over-communicate and if I put some people off. But in my personal experiences with agents, I learned that I would rather have more information than not enough. And I think that my clients have appreciated that. I've got referrals already, which again, that advertising is great. Marketing yourself is great. My notoriety helps. But I haven't had one client that picked me because I was a former basketball player. When I’ve gone out in the recent past, they’ve recognized me as a broker. Then I meet them in person. They're like, “Oh my God, you're huge!” They have no idea.
That’s good, right?
But then my competitive nature of wanting to do better for my clients than maybe some of my agents in the past did for me. For me, it was remembering to communicate and explain things and make sure that if they have any questions, that I'm answering those questions. I think that part goes into maybe a little into over communication. I try to do emails for the important stuff, text messages for, “Hey, you know, just letting you know this, you know, repair is going to be a little bit later, but I'll be there to make sure that they get in the house and get it fixed.”
I definitely would say the basketball has helped, just through the discipline of being a pro athlete.
You mentioned you’ve lived all over, which I know includes some time in Lawrence. Why Indy?
Well, we live here, my wife and I. As I said, we went into it together because she's actually a lot smarter than I am. We built our house that we live in and we're actually about to buy another piece of property and build a spec home for someone else—because if we didn’t do that, my wife was going to build another one for us.
But as far as “why Indianapolis?”, it's just simply because of my children are entrenched here. It got difficult bringing them back and forth to Kansas. There's a split custody situation where we have week-on, week-off with my older ones. And so, you know, in order for them to feel like dad was present—which I always have been during my parenting time— then there was half the time I was thinking “Oh, you know what, I'm going to go to Lawrence and go broadcast couple games, or go be wherever.”I just decided to put roots down. My wife and I both were like, you know what, for our three-year-old and for the older ones, um, let's just be here more. And so that's why we ended up selling everything we had in Lawrence.
As a former KU student myself and as someone who grew up in the area, I think it’s safe to say Lawrence has changed a lot in the last 20 years. How does the modern state of Lawrence compare to when you were playing for KU and living there later on?
There’s always going to be positives and negatives with growth. Lawrence has gotten bigger. Lawrence has gotten more money, a bigger tax base, and so there's going to be some changes. I do love that they're still trying to keep chain restaurants and businesses out of downtown. I still miss the Crossing. But the Oread Hotel beautiful thing and it's a cool place. We stay there usually when we stay at a hotel. For a football game, I just don't know how much better it could be for people that want to go watch the football game or just be a part of the festivities.
Lawrence is always going to be weird. And I like that. I want it to be a music haven where smaller groups can still come in and play downtown. Music has also changed some of these artists coming up. I'm not saying all of them—cause I know I'm an old man, and I’m going to sound like one— but some acts just want a big hit and be done. And there's the travelling musicians that are just musicians on the road. They're probably in it for a little bit of money, but they're comfortable traveling and making enough to share from pocket, traveling and performing. Whereas some of the artists that are coming up would rather give one big one and they're not going to go play small towns. It's like Lawrence, Kansas. They want to try to be a arena rock band or an arena rap ground right away.
Kansas City has more smaller music venues now too, which has made the scene pretty crowded.
How many bands that will turn into an REO or a Nirvana—bands that famously played Lawrence as they came up—are willing to pay their dues and play small venues in little towns and just go on a bus or a van and, you know, do it. Like the old artists used to do. There's not a whole lot of them. Even my favorite band in the world, Clutch, they used to play Lawrence and they don’t play there anymore.
Something I like to ask former Roy Williams players who still have ties to the program is whether they feel more allegiance to Coach Williams or Kansas. I had a conversation with Paul Pierce years back where he went out of his way to compliment Self. What do you think about the Bill Self era in general?
At the very beginning when he first got the job, I went and watched a couple of Bill Self’s practices. I thought to myself, “I am 100% positive I could not have played for Bill Self.” I love Bill Self and I love hanging out with Bill Self. Self just has a different style than Roy and I needed Roy at that time.
But as far as my connection to the program, I sat back behind the bench a couple a week ago at the Tennessee game. I have a bowling event that I host there every year. It all started when I was there every year, where the proceeds of which benefits a School of Education's multicultural scholarship arm—that was my degree. So I'm involved with the university as far as that goes.
But as far as basketball specifically, I don’t go in the locker room. I don’t want to be in the way. It’s the Bill Self era and Bill Self takes care of Bill Self’s guys. He takes care of all of us and he makes us all feel welcomed. But I know for a fact that it's more comfortable when it's guys you recruited or sit behind the bench and it's like, “Hey man, I want to come in the locker room and say hi to the guys.” I don't have anything in common with these guys. I could be their dad. I'm that old. I've got a junior in college myself. I'm not trying to go you in the locker room and, and hang out with the guys cause we're a completely different generation.
When it comes to following along with the season, I’ll definitely speak my mind on social media. Sometimes people like what I have to say. And sometimes they don't. I speak my mind. I know I'm a bit of a contrarian but at the same time, I bleed crimson and blue. I don't think that there’s anyone who loves Kansas basketball as much as I do and respects the program as much as I do. I love it. And I'm always going to.
What do you think the future of college basketball is?
The blue bloods are always going to do well. But you don’t have to be a blue blood to have fans, especially in the Midwest. I know San Diego State isn't going to have fans unless they're doing what they're doing right now because it's San Diego. I grew up there. I never saw 17,000 people inside anywhere.
The college game always mimics the NBA. This style is drastically changing just like the NBA has and the, there's the style shifts of focus on more on the three point shot. And I think that turns off some of the basketball purists. But basketball purists like myself understand the game has always changed, and it always will. It's jazz music. It's never going to stay the same.
As far as a fan bases, what they can do to keep fan bases is try to figure out a way to keep kids in school longer because it's easier and more rewarding to cheer for players that you've seen for two or three or years—at least as opposed to the one-and-done issue. And I think that the blue bloods only survive because they win so much. Because if they don't…. look at North Carolina right now. I watched the game the other night and they're not selling the Dean Dome out. But it's just because they're not winning.
It's harder to come in and cheer for a team that's not winning when they're all freshmen or seniors that have never played compared to a team where you’ve cheered them on from their freshman year to their junior year and they're just having a down year. But I've seen these kids grow up and I love watching them play. That era is going to be gone forever unless college basketball figures it out.
My personal opinion is the NCAA has got to go away. Players having the ability to make money off their own likeness is going to keep more of them in school. Right now, they’re going to the NBA, they're jumping overseas because the need to make money is there. But that’s not the path for everyone.
You can educate kids to learn that they’re not all going to be pros. If you can get most of them on the right track and understand, Hey, look, there’s a 99% chance you're not going to make a living doing this for the rest of your lives. And if you're lucky enough to make it, you're probably only gonna play one or two years and it's probably not going to be in the NBA. You're probably gonna go overseas and realize, yeah, this isn't it. So if you can get that through their head, but also incentivize it by giving them the ability to make money off their own like this while they're in school, then it's a lot easier to keep them in school. And they're going to be there for three and four years, get their degree. And then when basketball doesn't pan out, they have a life and it's like, hey, they can pass that on to the next generation. And the culture changes.
But it's not going to change as long as the NCAA is trying to squeeze all the money out of the players out of the talent and keep it for themselves.
The NBA is a personality empowering league right now, where I could see an athlete like you thriving, even if you weren’t a dominant player performance-wise. Do you feel like you would have been better off in the current NBA climate?
I mean the, the way the world works with social media now, personality sells a lot more. It always has. But it’s a lot easier to sell personality now because of social media platforms which didn’t really exist when I was playing. So for off-the-court endorsements and being able to make some additional funds, yeah, I think so.
One of the times I was a free agent, I had a chance to go play for the Lakers. Shaq called my agent, and he said he wanted to play with me instead of against me. They made a run at me, but it was a one-year deal with the promise, the “under the table” like “Hey, we will take care of you, but you know, we can only pay you this salary.”
Another team—Dallas I think—was one of the other teams that was kind of saying the same thing, but I took the six-year deal because that's a guarantee. I think if I had gone to L.A., I'd probably still be in L.A. And so, to answer your question, yeah, it would've been easier to not be in a big market nowadays with social media. You could still become Internet famous and, and all that kind of stuff. But Detroit was the biggest market I ever played in.
I think that if I had played in big market like Dallas or LA or, or, you know, any of them, uh, I'd probably still be living in that city because of the connections I would have made. My personality would have lent itself to becoming more of a figure in those in those cities. And yeah, I certainly would love to be making what they make now. But that’s the nature of the game.
Your infamous on-camera incident—”Hey kids, do drugs”—would be looked at so differently now, and you got killed for it at the time.
I’m friends with some professional comedians. I joke with them—”I'm like, I bet you wish you had a joke that lasted 13 years!” And they say, “Yeah, for sure!. I don't have anybody coming up to me from a joke from 2007!” So you’re right.
But on the other hand, you know, some, we're in a culture right now as far as social media, the outrage culture. And I know that's a trite expression already, but still. Had I done that joke these days, it would have been like, “Oh my God, I can't believe you said that.” And then tomorrow it'd be the next outrage thing. So I think that it would be more forgotten. I agree with you. I think it would have been like, Oh, whatever. Oh my God, he made a joke. Oh, it wasn't a joke. It was a joke. Oh, distraction! Here's the next shiny object.
But now kids are watching the NBA now that are in their teenage years. They never watched me live. And so all they know about me mostly because of Survivor. The Survivor fan base is very young. And so these people were like Googling my stats for the, for the Boston Celtics playoff run. And they're like, “You didn’t even play in the 2008 Finals!” not knowing that I had career ending-ankle surgeries before the playoffs. So all they know is what they can Google. Like the first page of results. So naturally they're like, “Hey, kids do drugs. And it's like, that's all he's known for!” I’m like, that’s awesome.
On the one hand, I've never been a hippie. I don't even consider that one a mistake. I just think it's hilarious. And it was a joke. I was the one guy on that team that never failed a drug test. Like, get the hell outta here.
I was doing some light eBaying and saw that a Champion-brand Scot Pollard Kings jersey is considered a fairly hot item—reliably $60 or $70.
Name another player that's been retired for 12 years that could get 60 bucks for their jersey that never made an All-Star game! There were plenty of guys in the 1997 class that were first round draft picks in 1997 that you can’t even name who they are now. Kelvin Cato—where’s he at now?
If I was in the NBA now, I'd probably be even more famous for my personality and off-the-court stuff than my production on-court. Which is certainly the case now.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Good stuff!