When Atlanta Hawks guard and Baltimore native Malcolm Delaney learned that former NFL linebacker Aaron Maybin was seeking donations of coats, gloves, hats, thermals and socks for students in his hometown, he swiftly answered the call.
“Aaron is the guy who sets the bar, and hopefully all of the other athletes — or don’t even have to be athletes — can match, or just to open their eyes about the city,” Delaney said.
As students brave rough winter weather, wearing coats in classrooms no warmer than 40 degrees, Delaney has decided to donate more than 400 coats. The Burlington department store chain was moved by Delaney’s gesture and offered to donate an additional 200 coats to two other local schools.
“I grew up in Baltimore City Public Schools, and I knew exactly what he [Maybin] was talking about,” Delaney said. “It just sparked something, and I was just going to do something. Growing up in the city, I had friends who didn’t have coats and I have been in situations where I had to wear my coat to class because of the cold. Fortunately, Burlington heard my idea and they felt that they wanted to match my donation, and instead of one school we got three schools. They came through, and the principals to all these schools were open to take something out of the coats.”
Delaney wanted to make sure to make a direct impact. To put his plan into action, he contacted his agency and his best friend, Desman Thomas. For Delaney, having a team and being in a position to help children is probably one of the most important things after family.
“I heard that the kids needed so many different things, and then the reports came out about space heaters and then some schools said they couldn’t even use the space heaters, so Desman is that guy who let us know exactly what they needed.”
The recipients of Delaney’s donations include Gardenville Elementary (Delaney’s alma mater), Afya Charter Middle School and Harford Heights Elementary.
Delaney said having the opportunity to give back to children in his hometown is “very gratifying.”
“I always did stuff, and I always thought that if I made it I would always give back because there weren’t a lot of guys before me who I could say actually helped me or my friends out in the process of trying to achieve our goals. So me making it and having the ability to do it, I try my best to do it, and just having people around me that are on the same page with me and they’re just as passionate about it as me is easy to do, ’cause Baltimore city is very tough with picking the right team.”
Delaney is also passionate about the school system as a whole.
“I think just the attention needs to be paid more to the structure of these schools,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of schools that aren’t in good condition, so I think that’s something that needs to be addressed. And the heating system and the air conditioning, that needs to be priority. I also think the kids should be comfortable going to school, and it’s already enough to have to deal with an inner city of Baltimore, period, but once you add into consideration that some of these kids don’t even have coats to go to school, and once they get to school that there’s no heat, that just makes the learning environment a lot tougher. So I think just addressing this problem is a start, and then after that I think, you know, we still got to beat up the Baltimore city school system and try to get some more things done, because we might have one.”
Delaney played professionally overseas after college for teams including Élan Chalon, Budivelnyk Kyiv, Bayern Munich and Lokomotiv Kuban. In 2016, he earned an All-EuroLeague first-team selection.
Delaney signed with the Atlanta Hawks on July 15, 2016, and made his NBA debut in the team’s season opener in October that year.