TIMES’ ALL-STAR BASKETBALL TEAMS : BOYS’ ALL-VENTURA COUNTY : Martin Brings Change at Thousand Oaks

The transformation of Kevin Martin begins on game day. The Thousand Oaks High basketball player shuffles around school in his slow, peculiar gait, chest bent forward and toward the ground. He is shy and soft-spoken and is difficult to understand when he does get around to talking. He starts his sentences in strong tones that eventually melt into soft mumbles.

But once he assumes the persona of a high school basketball star, a different Martin emerges. He is forceful, aggressive, even dynamic. That was no introvert screaming encouragement to his teammates during the Lancers’ most exciting game of the recently completed season.

Martin scored 36 points, including a three-point shot that beat the buzzer at the end of overtime and forced a second overtime period, as Thousand Oaks upset Westlake, 70-69, to clinch a spot in the Southern Section 4-A Division playoffs.

Martin’s inspirational play and his his 20.7 scoring average were instrumental in his selection to The Times’ All-Ventura County boys’ basketball team announced today. Martin is the only non-Simi Valley player from the Marmonte League to make the 10-player team, joining Pioneers Shawn DeLaittre, Butch Hawking and Don MacLean. Other players selected to The Times’ inaugural Ventura County team include: Shawn Kirkeby and Mike Sandoval of Buena, Chris Hantgin of Ventura, Eric Thomas of Rio Mesa, Kwame Joyner of Santa Clara and Andy Wagoner of St. Bonaventure.

Martin’s best friend on the Thousand Oaks team, John Sell, observed firsthand the guard’s metamorphosis.

“Off the court, he’s not a leader,” Sell said. “He’s shy and kind of nervous. We always imitate the way he mumbles. But on the court, he doesn’t mumble. He’s more aggressive and gets down to business. He gets mad. He wants revenge. We took him seriously during that Westlake game and he won it for us.”

Martin admits that it is often easier to function on the court than it is elsewhere.

“I feel more at home on the court,” Martin said. “I can do what I want there. Sometimes I don’t feel that way off the court. I don’t get involved with things off the court. The court is my place.”

It is not surprising that Martin’s personality flowers on the hardwood. His childhood is deeply rooted in basketball country and, always, it seems, his life has revolved around the game.

Martin was born in Indiana, fewer than 10 miles from French Lick, the home of Larry Bird, Martin’s No. 1 hero. Posters of Bird cover the walls of his bedroom and he has a virtual library of videotapes of Celtic games. It is because of Boston’s star forward--not because of his odd walk--that Martin is nicknamed Bird.

When he was in grade school, Martin’s family moved to Cincinnati, where he played youth baseball with Ken Griffey Jr., the No. 1 pick in baseball’s amateur draft last June and the son of the Atlanta Braves’ outfielder.

Martin and Griffey were schoolmates at Cincinnati’s Moeller High, which Martin left after his freshman year. His family moved to California and he enrolled at Thousand Oaks where he was peppered with questions as soon as some of his classmates learned he had attended Moeller, a powerhouse football school.

Moeller gained national attention when then football-Coach Gerry Faust was hired at Notre Dame. Martin grew up following Moeller football and was awed as a youngster when he watched Moeller play Massillon High in a game that drew more than 40,000 fans.

“There’s no beach back there and sports are everything,” Martin said. “The facilities at Moeller are great. They have an athletic center that’s almost bigger than our whole school. And that’s just for the athletes to work out in.

“The athletes are better here, but there is more intensity back there. The fans are rabid.”

That atmosphere tugs at Martin, who would dearly enjoy returning to the Midwest--as long as he has a college scholarship in hand. He is being recruited by Fresno State, the University of Portland and Cal Lutheran, but his first choice is Xavier, a parochial school in Cincinnati. Xavier was 26-4 this season and given a good chance to beat its first-round opponent in the NCAA tournament. But like everyone else who played them in the tournament, Xavier lost to the Kansas Jayhawks.

Martin is a 6-3 point guard with an excellent shooting touch from three-point range. His scoring average increased from 14.9 points a game as a junior to 20.7 after the three-point rule was implemented. He shot 43.7% from long range, 52% overall and 77% from the free-throw line. He also led the team with 4.2 assists a game.

He said he benefited from the three-point rule but not as people expected: He used it as a decoy.

“Before the three-point rule, I always had a hand in my face when I took a shot from 15 feet,” he said. “This year it was like they would let me shoot from inside the three-point line. They defensed me so I wouldn’t take any three-point shots.”

Despite his personal success, frustration dogged his senior season. Thousand Oaks was 6-6 in the Marmonte League but only 8-13 overall, including a 90-61 loss to Diamond Bar in the first-round of the playoffs.

Thousand Oaks lacked an inside threat. The Lancers’ front line included two 6-foot forwards and a 6-3 center.

“Sometimes I fantasized what it would be like if Kevin had been surrounded by highly skilled big players,” Thousand Oaks Coach Ed Chevalier said. “He had to start our offense and often had to finish it. In our last nine games, he was at least double-teamed but there was no falloff. He tightened his belt and saw it as a challenge.”

In both varsity seasons, Martin and the rest of the league played in Simi Valley’s shadow, especially the 6-foot, 10-inch one cast by MacLean. More than once Martin wondered what life would be like if the family had settled in Simi Valley instead of Thousand Oaks.

“That thought has crossed my mind,” he said. “Don is the best high school player I’ve ever seen. He’s such a great player he makes everybody look good. When we played Simi, we put three guys on him and took our chances with DeLaittre and Hawking. I was jealous of Don but I respect him because he works hard.”

Still, there were benefits to life as a Lancer. Thousand Oaks was overshadowed by Simi Valley, but no one in town overshadowed Martin.

“Don was so good and made things so easy that I don’t think I would have worked as hard if I played with him,” he said.