Kansas’ Scot Pollard talks about keeping in touch with his former teammates and coach, clears up the story about selling Tyshawn Taylor his car and explains what he likes about current forward Cole Aldrich (run time is 6:17; transcript below the jump).
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Lost Lettermen: This is Jim Weber from Lostettermen.com and I’m joined by Kansas great Scot Pollard.
Going back to your playing days you played with some KU legends like Jacque Vaughn, Raef LaFrentz, Greg Ostertag, Paul Pierce. How close are you with those guys and how often do you keep in touch with them?
Scot Pollard: Well, I was teammates with Paul my last year in the NBA in Boston. Paul and I were never best friends, but we get along. We’re friends and we haven’t kept in touch much since I’ve been gone from Boston but Jacque lives here in town as well and we keep in touch fairly regularly and Greg Ostertag; last time I saw him was when the ‘Hawks were in the Final Four in 2008. Raef, I would say it’s been a little while. Raef’s been up in Iowa and in Portland and doesn’t make it back to Lawrence very often and I don’t make it to Iowa very often so we’ve kept in touch through friends.
But I would say with any of those guys, when we get back together it’s just like old times. We all get along very well.
LL: What’s your relationship like with Roy Williams? I know he’s your former coach and he obviously ruffled a lot of feathers when he left Lawrence for Chapel Hill.
SP: Um, I love Roy Williams. He’s still like a father to me. As I get a little bit older and I think a little bit wiser, I talk with him less and less and need his advice less and less but definitely during the early part of my NBA career I was talking to him a lot and he gave me a lot of good advice over those first couple of years getting adjusted to the NBA and there were times where I just didn’t want to be there and he talked me into sticking around.
He’s definitely somebody I’ll always look up to and it’s not possible for me to emulate him. I don’t have that discipline. I have my own kind of discipline but I definitely do not have Roy Williams discipline. He’s one of those guys that just doesn’t ever make a mistake.
LL: Gotta ask you about this Tyshawn Taylor car story. A lot of people assume that you were like a car dealer in town, selling Escalades. But this was in fact your old Chevy Tahoe, is that correct?
SP: Yeah, actually that was the first car I bought when I got into the NBA. I leased it because I didn’t have any money and after about six months or so I finally had some money and I paid it off and I had that car for, I don’t know, 12 years or so. My mom drove it for awhile and we kept it around. We had a live-in nanny that drove it awhile and then it just came time, when we moved back here we didn’t have a place for it and as much as it hurt me, actually. It was more sentimental value than real value because that thing, blue book was about $4,000.
Yeah, I didn’t sell him a brand new Escalade. I sold him an old car that’s go issues and he paid fair market value and that’s pretty much the end of that story. It got blown up to be some crazy kind of thing but the truth as been exposed as the truth, which it was, and that’s the end of that one.
LL: Yeah, with the current players, do you ever lend your advice to them, talk to them about what it’s like playing at KU? Or do you just kind of steer clear of that?
SP: Well I talked to coach Self the other day about maybe coming in and working with the big guys a little bit. Just after watching them, just seems like some of them, they got those bodies … I use an analogy from Swingers where Vince Vaughn is telling Jon Favreau he’s got these big bear claws and he doesn’t know how to use them.
I kind of feel the same way about these guys. There are some guys on this team that are just big, they’ve got NBA bodies. Maybe not center bodies but they have power forward bodies. And it just seems like at times they just don’t know how to use them. I know they got Danny Manning working with them.
I know there’s nothing I could tell them that Danny Manning couldn’t but having played a different position than Danny Manning and having to use my body a little bit more than Danny. Danny had to use his athletic ability, which I did not have. So we have a little bit different backgrounds, a little bit different expertise on the subject.
But I talked to Bill the other day and I’m going to go into practice soon but so far, meh, once in a while if I bump into them in the city I just say, “Hey, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you do this or why can’t do that?” More joking kind of thing.
Especially with that car thing they’ve been worried about me being in contact with them and I just don’t want anybody to think there’s anything going on. I don’t want to be seen talking to them a lot or calling them a lot just because the NCAA is crazy.
LL: (laughs) Understandable. My last question for you is a lot of comparisons have been made to you and Cole Aldrich with your eccentric personalities.
Does he remind you a lot of yourself?
SP: Well on the court, not really. He’s doesn’t change ends of the courts as quick as I do and I can’t block shots like he can. He’s got longer arms and he’s a much more effective scorer with his back to the basket. I was always an offensive rebounder/tip in guy. If I was close enough and somebody was not giving me too much trouble I could make a move on him and score. But I wasn’t your traditional back-to-the-basket center so playing wise we’re very different.
But, you know what, I told him one time awhile a ago, probably before his freshman year. I said, “You know, after talking wit you for awhile you seem like you’re the good kind of dumb.” And by that I mean he doesn’t seem like he’s the guy that lets all the trappings of being a KU basketball player get to him. He’s blocked all that out whether he’s dumb or he intentionally wants to be a good guy and do the right things, he’s stayed that way and that’s what’s going to make him successful hopefully on the next level, just maintaining that hard work ethic that he has and being dumb enough just to realize that he’s lucky enough to be playing this game for a great college like he is and then hopefully at the next level it’ll be his job.
I think if he maintains that similarity to me, that’s all he needs to worry about. He doesn’t need to be as crazy as I am.
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