June 28, 1961

Malone was born in Mobile and attended high school in Georgia before playing college basketball at Mississippi State University. He was selected by the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) as the 10^th pick in the first round of the 1983 NBA Draft and made his professional debut in October that year. The 6-foot-4 shooting guard averaged 19 points per game over 13 seasons in the NBA, which included turns with the Utah Jazz, Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat. In 1996, his final season, Malone was among the star players featured in the Warner Bros./Looney Tunes movie “Space Jam,” along with Michael Jordan and Alabama native Charles Barkley. After retiring, Malone coached for several years in the NBA developmental league. He is the nephew of the late Vivian Malone Jones, one of the first two African-Americans to enroll at the University of Alabama after being briefly barred at the “schoolhouse door” in 1963 by then-Gov. George Wallace. She became the university’s first black graduate in 1965.

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Jeff Malone, of the Utah Jazz, prepares to take a foul shot against the Denver Nuggets, 1993. (Tim Defrisco/ALLSPORT, Getty Images)

Vivian Malone entering Foster Auditorium to register for classes at the University of Alabama. Malone had to walk through a crowd that included photographers, National Guard members, and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, June 11, 1963. (Photograph by Warren K. Leffler, U.S. News and World Report, Wikipedia)

Vivian Malone, far left, was one of the first African-American students to attend the University of Alabama and the first black graduate of the school. Malone was blocked from enrolling during Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s famous “stand in the schoolhouse door” to oppose integration of the university in 1963. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, The University of Alabama Libraries)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.