WHERE ARE THEY NOW?: JIM MALKIN : Thanks for the Memories : Former CSUN Standout Keeps Trophies Hidden, Remembrances Close

Jim Malkin sits in the den of his Granada Hills home surrounded by an array of trophies and awards befitting a man who holds the Cal State Northridge career scoring record in basketball.

On one side of the room, gold-colored statuettes and cups stretch the length of a bookcase.

None of them are his.

They belong to his daughter Jamie, a track and soccer phenom who in the fall will be a sophomore at Alemany High.

An adjacent wall is covered with plaques.

Those are his. But most of them honor his achievements as an educator.

Malkin’s basketball trophies have been boxed and stored in the rafters of the garage for the past 17 years. He took them down recently only to find them scarred and broken.

His memories, however, are not.

Malkin, a 6-foot-3 forward, played basketball at Northridge for 2 1/2 seasons, from 1959-62, at a time when the school’s teams got waxed regularly.

Then, as they are now, Northridge’s athletic programs were in a formative stage. Malkin’s first season with the Matadors was the basketball team’s second.

“Yeah, we got beat up pretty bad sometimes,” said Malkin, 51, perhaps recalling one of the 40-point pastings at the hands of Cal State Los Angeles, Fresno State and Kentucky Wesleyan. “But we did OK. We had some fun, learned a lot and had some good road trips.”

Malkin’s recollection is fuzzy when it comes to the circumstances surrounding many of the 1,301 points he scored in 74 games for what was then known as San Fernando Valley State. But mention his teammates and experiences shared and a flood of fond memories are released.

“Being a city boy from Hollywood, I had never been anywhere when I came to Valley State,” Malkin said. “The first time I ever saw snow was on a basketball road trip up in Spokane (Wash.). There was so much snow we were late for the game.”

He also remembers Bruce Powers and a trip to Tennessee that became memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Powers, Malkin’s roommate, was Valley State’s only black player. “They wouldn’t let us stay in Nashville and we had reservations and everything,” Malkin said. “We’d walk in and they’d see Bruce and say, ‘You can’t stay here.’ We drove all over. I mean everywhere.”

Paul Thomas, Valley State’s coach, went so far as to call on a friend who coached at Tennessee A&I;, an all-black school nearby. “They said we could stay,” Malkin recalled, “but they didn’t have any place for us to sleep except the gym floor.”

Thomas finally resorted to blackmail in order to secure appropriate accommodations for the players. “At about 2 or 3 in the morning, we went back to one of the hotels we started at and Thomas said, ‘Look, if you don’t let us stay here, I’m going to call every newspaper I can think of and get out the word that a well-established national chain does not let black people stay in their hotels.’ ”

At that, the night manager called a superior and an arrangement was made: The team could stay as long as Powers was accompanied by his coaches or teammates whenever he left his room.

“Bruce was a very proud person, but I felt sorry for him. Everybody did,” Malkin said. “Coming from the West to the South, it was one thing to read about all the discrimination, but it was another thing to experience it. Those are things you just don’t forget.”

The road was kinder to Malkin, who had the “star quality” sought by sportswriters digging for an angle on the visiting team from Southern California.

“You would think they might ask about the upcoming game, but no. They’d see that I was from Hollywood, California, and all they wanted to know was if I knew any movie stars,” Malkin said. “They thought anyone from Hollywood must be in the movies.”

Instead, Malkin talked about his famous high school classmates, singer Rick Nelson and Mike Farrell--who later became B.J. Hunnicut on the television series MASH--among them.

Malkin did not take center stage himself until after he had graduated early from Hollywood High and headed for the San Fernando Valley, a rural locale then dominated by orange groves and farmland.

His first stop was Valley College, where he played two seasons for Coach Ralph Caldwell and was an All-Metro Conference selection.

Malkin said that he had partial scholarship offers from UCLA’s John Wooden and USC’s Forrest Twogood but chose to play it safe and accept a full scholarship from Valley State.

“For me, it was great,” Malkin said. “It wasn’t much of a risk. I could be a star without a lot of effort as it turned out.”

In the 1959-60 season, Malkin scored 19.7 points per game and ranked 19th in the nation in scoring average. Valley State finished with a 14-15 record, but slipped to 10-24 the following season and 3-22 the next.

Despite the losing records, Malkin remembers many good times. Among his fraternity cohorts were Bob Hiegert, Northridge’s athletic director today, current basketball Coach Pete Cassidy, current softball Coach Gary Torgeson and current swim Coach Pete Accardy.

Valley State had an enrollment of 3,500 in 1959, but grew to about 10,000 by the time Malkin graduated in 1962. “In terms of the turnout and enthusiasm for sports, it was a great place to be,” Malkin said. “We all lived around the area and everybody knew everybody. It didn’t matter if it was athletics or drama, there was always a good turnout because everybody knew someone in the production.”

In Malkin’s day, junior college transfers were allowed three seasons of eligibility at four-year schools, but Malkin’s Valley State career ended after 2 1/2 because of a technicality that involved his midterm graduation from high school.

His final college game was at Valley State against a Cal State Los Angeles team coached by former Celtic guard Bill Sharman, who went on to become coach and general manager of the Lakers.

“I think every athlete remembers their last game because all of a sudden the reality of everything ending comes true,” Malkin said. “That was a very memorable game for a lot of reasons.”

Malkin recalled that “nothing went wrong except we had a big brawl and the police came.” Malkin didn’t get directly involved in the fighting by mutual agreement with the player against whom he was matched.

“He and I were both so exhausted, we looked at each other and said, ‘Uh-uh’ and just went our separate ways,” Malkin said.

A Valley State dean wasn’t so fortunate. He got cold-cocked after rushing to break up the fight. “That was his first mistake,” Malkin said. “They called the paramedics to haul him out. . . .”

Malkin scored 28 points and the team set a school scoring record in a 111-86 victory.

The rest of Malkin’s basketball career was spent with a Los Angeles-based semiprofessional team. Thomas arranged a tryout with the Lakers, but Malkin said he declined the invitation because he felt incapable of making the required transition from forward to guard.

Malkin planned a career in advertising and marketing, but by 1964 he was lured into a teaching position at Grant High, where he coached B and C basketball for the next 10 years.

In 1975, he coached basketball at Valley College. After taking part in an administrative internship and training program with the Los Angeles Unified School District from 1975-78, Malkin was hired by the Simi Valley Unified School District, with which he has been a counselor and administrator for 13 years.

This spring he received special recognition from the State Department of Education as administrator of the year for vocational education.

Malkin became a member of the Northridge Athletic Hall of Fame in 1982. In his home, the only evidence of his past athletic endeavors is a plaque from the school recognizing his induction.

He said that he never dreamed his scoring record would last so many years.

“It makes me feel good to go to a CSUN basketball game and see my name in the program,” Malkin said. “Nobody in the audience knows who I am except those guys from Valley State, but that’s fine with me.

“The greatest things about life’s experiences, whether it’s athletics or other extracurricular things people do, are the friendships that develop over the years. Those I’ll have forever.”