Underdog Stories / Sports analysis & explainers

What Is Life Like as an NBA Role Player?

What is life like as an NBA role player? Scot Pollard's career shows how draft surprises, team fit, sudden trades and veteran lessons shape the job.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · October 14, 2017

Share on X

Scot Pollard was playing cards with friends in a Kansas basement during the 2003 NBA draft when he heard on television that he was going to Indiana. No one had told him. Nobody from the Sacramento Kings had said a word.

What is life like as an NBA role player? Pollard’s answer is that you earn a job by doing work a team needs, then keep proving you can do it. Your minutes can change with the coach, the roster or an injury. So can your address. Pollard found his place by learning from better players and finding a team that knew what to do with him.

On Tales from the Association, host Chris Horwedel asks Pollard about the stars he played beside. The more revealing story is what happened around them: a rookie who called his college coach in doubt, a trade announced before the player knew, and a title won while he could only watch. It’s worth listening to Pollard tell those parts himself.

What is an NBA role player?

An NBA role player has a specific job in a team’s plan. For Pollard, a center, that often meant rebounding, defending and making life difficult for the other big men, while teammates with different skills handled the scoring. That was the point. He had to make his own skills useful enough to stay on the floor.

Pollard told Horwedel he was never going to be an NBA superstar. The numbers give that remark some shape. He averaged 4.5 points and 4.8 rebounds across his first ten seasons. In Sacramento, where he says he found the right fit, he averaged 5.9 points and 6.0 rebounds over five seasons.

That gap between a modest stat line and a valued teammate is the whole point. In a later interview with the Kings, Pollard described his approach as outworking opponents to the ball and down the court. Sacramento used him as a reserve behind a group with far more scoring power. When he started, he could do more: in 47 Kings starts, he averaged 9.1 rebounds.

Role player doesn’t mean spare part. It means the team has a reason to put you in. The hard part is giving it that reason again when the lineup changes.

How does a role player earn a place in the NBA?

Pollard’s first-round pick surprised him. Before the 1997 draft, he was in Las Vegas with his new wife, away from the event. He told Horwedel that Detroit had worked him out with its early second-round pick in mind. Then he worked out for teams picking late in the first round, and some told him they would take him if he was still there.

Detroit selected him 19th overall. Pollard believes those later workouts pushed the Pistons to act sooner than they had planned. That’s his account of what changed their minds; the draft record confirms where he landed.

Getting picked solved one problem. Detroit brought new ones. Pollard said coach Doug Collins’s treatment of rookies did not work for him. He appeared in 33 games during his first season and averaged 9.6 minutes. When Alvin Gentry took over as coach, Pollard said he began to feel better about his place there.

Before that, Pollard called his former Kansas coach, Roy Williams, more than once. He said he was working hard but wondered if he belonged in the league. According to Pollard, Williams reminded him that he had been drafted for a reason and urged him to keep working through his three-year contract.

It was practical advice for a young player who could not control the coach’s view of him. Detroit missed the postseason that year. Pollard said it was the only season, from his junior year of high school through the end of his playing career, when his team did not reach it. The NBA had given him a job, but little of the comfort he expected to come with one.

Why does team fit matter for an NBA role player?

Pollard’s next stop barely counted as a stop. He told Horwedel that Pistons teammate Lindsey Hunter informed him of a trade to Atlanta after reading it in the morning paper. Pollard went to the Hawks, fell ill during their short training camp and never played a game for them. He said Atlanta offered him a choice: accept a place on its reserve list or be cut.

He called his agent. According to Pollard, four teams were willing to sign him, and his agent thought Sacramento offered the best chance to play. Pollard chose his release and joined the Kings during the lockout-shortened 1998–99 season. The league record shows him playing 16 games for Sacramento that year.

“I wanted to learn from players that I knew were more talented than me.”
— Scot Pollard, on Tales From the Association

The difference was visible over time. With the Kings, Pollard had a clear task beside Chris Webber and Vlade Divac. He played 80 games in 2001–02, averaging 23.5 minutes and a career-high 7.1 rebounds. Sacramento won 61 games that season and reached the Western Conference finals.

No magic there. The phrase right fit described Pollard’s work on that roster, where the coaches had reason to use him. He told Horwedel plainly that Detroit and Atlanta were wrong for him, while Sacramento was right, a judgment he reached after living all three versions.

The Kings then traded him to Indiana in 2003. He learned about that deal while playing cards. “I was like a stock,” Pollard said of being moved without warning. Horwedel first blamed Atlanta executive Pete Babcock for the way Pollard had been treated, then caught himself: he had confused Babcock with the Detroit account. Pollard corrected him and said Babcock, at least, had spoken to him about his options. The distinction mattered to a man who had twice heard his trade news from somebody else.

What can a role player learn from NBA stars?

Pollard asked questions. He told Horwedel he pulled aside talented teammates because he wanted to learn from people who could do more than he could. That included Reggie Miller in Indiana.

Miller, Pollard said, led mainly by example. He worked hard and would give advice when asked, but he did not spend his time barking orders. Pollard wished Miller had been more vocal with their Pacers team. He also thought younger teammates needed to pay closer attention to what Miller was already showing them. That is Pollard’s reading of one locker room, offered from inside it.

The Pacers had acquired Pollard in the three-team deal that sent Brad Miller to Sacramento in July 2003. Pollard stayed for three seasons. In his final two years there, he had steadier playing time, appearing in 49 games in 2004–05 and 45 the next season.

In Cleveland, Pollard saw a different problem with leadership. He said the veterans wanted young LeBron James to take charge because James was the team’s best player. Pollard also understood why that was a lot to ask of someone so young. A reserve who played a few minutes one night and none the next could offer advice, he said, but might struggle to command the huddle. Pollard appeared in 24 Cavaliers games that season, averaging 4.5 minutes.

Kevin Garnett gave him yet another example in Boston. Pollard told Horwedel that the two had disliked playing against each other for years. As Celtics teammates, they became friends. Pollard admired Garnett’s demand that everyone work hard, even while acknowledging that Garnett could be harsh about it. For Pollard, learning from a star did not require liking how that star acted as an opponent. Sharing a locker room changed what he could see.

What is life like as an NBA role player when you get hurt?

The Boston Celtics signed Pollard in August 2007. He came to a team built around Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, and he came with a bad ankle. Pollard said a doctor warned him during training camp that surgery was coming. Pollard chose to try to play through the season.

He told Horwedel the ankle gave out during a February game in Phoenix. Still, Pollard tried to play the next night in Portland. He could barely push off his foot. When coach Doc Rivers took him out, Pollard protested with a joke: “Doc, I never could jump.” Rivers had seen enough. Pollard underwent surgery on one ankle, then the other, and watched the playoffs from the bench.

Boston beat the Lakers on June 17, 2008, to win the championship. Pierce was named Finals MVP. Pollard did not play in that postseason, a fact he discussed without dressing it up. He had played hurt during the regular season, then could no longer play at all.

Horwedel called the title a perfect end to Pollard’s career. Pollard gently pushed back. He described it as a great way to “limp out of the NBA,” then explained what was missing: he wanted to have played in those final games. He still valued the ring. When people noticed it, Pollard said he had a ready line about his old Kansas teammate and Boston’s Finals MVP: “Paul Pierce got this for me.”

What does “NBA role player” mean over a whole career?

The meaning changes with the team. In Detroit, Pollard was a first-round rookie trying to get on the court. In Sacramento, he became a trusted reserve on a 61-win club. With Cleveland, his minutes could disappear for games at a time. In Boston, injury took away even the chance to help during the playoffs. He played 506 regular-season games in an NBA career that ran from 1997–98 through 2007–08.

Pollard did not tell Horwedel that hard work made every stop fair. His two surprise trades rule that out. He did say that finding the right place changed his career, and that asking better players for help made him a better teammate. Those are useful habits in a job where the player can do everything asked of him and still learn about his next move from a television in a basement.