Matt Maloney brings his passion for basketball into his music | Where are they now?

Athletes come and go through teams and cities. Some stay in the spotlight while others can be lost with the passage of time.

It is about those athletes we ask, Where Are They Now?

Then: Penn basketball player; Ivy League player of the year (1994-95).

Now: Professional musician and retired NBA player.

During his career at the Penn, Matt Maloney wasn't the talkative type  who filled a reporter's notepad with a bunch of colorful quotes.

His father, Jim, was a longtime basketball coach and taught his son that the game was about deeds and not words.

Still, just because Matt Maloney didn't show his creative flair to the media didn't mean it wasn't there. When he wasn't becoming the 1994-95 Ivy League player of the year and a three-time first-team all-Ivy selection or working to get an Ivy League degree, Maloney was writing music.

Now, two decades after leaving Penn and 15 years after ending an improbable seven-year career in the NBA, Maloney, 46, is pursuing a career in his other life-long passion.

Maloney, who played most of his NBA career with the Houston Rockets, has teamed with fellow Houston musician Calvin Stanley. Starline, as the electro-rock duo is known, released its first album, CJM, in February 2016.

The album title is the initials of Matt's brother Christopher, who died in 2013. Starline just went back into the studio to work on its second album.

"I never had the mind-set of 'It's NBA or bust,' " said Maloney, who was not drafted but played in 295 NBA games with the Rockets, Chicago Bulls, and Atlanta Hawks and made more than $17 million. "I always just wanted to continue to improve my skill level, my basketball IQ, and athleticism.

"It was that micro-drive of getting better each day that ultimately helped provide opportunities for me and made me prepared to thrive when those opportunities came around.

"I guess with my new venture in writing and creating music, it's the same approach. I've always in some way have had a passion for writing and just want to continue to create regardless of what the end road is. I've been extremely fortunate that pursuing one passion has allowed me some freedom to pursue another."

At Penn, Maloney teamed with backcourt mate Jerome Allen to lead the Quakers to three consecutive undefeated Ivy League seasons and three NCAA Tournament bids. He was a two-time first-team all-Big 5 selection.

After playing a season in the Continental Basketball Association, he signed with Houston and ended up starting 82 games as a rookie on a team that won 57 games and advanced to the Western Conference finals.

Maloney, who was a second-team all-rookie pick, retired after the 2002-03 season with Atlanta. He invested in real estate and worked with a charity called the Sunshine Kids in Houston. It benefits children with cancer.

Stanley, who was the longtime leader of a Houston alternative-rock band called Pale, often ran into Maloney at concerts by U.K. bands and at Pale shows.

"Matt was always there," Stanley told the Houston Press in 2016. "So I was like, 'OK, this guy totally gets what I'm into, and not a lot of people do.' "

Around 2014 or 2015, some friends encouraged Stanley to listen to a demo Maloney had put together. Stanley liked it. He told Maloney that he could hear his passion for music and should pursue it seriously.

The duo started reconstructing Maloney's original demo, and Starline was born.

"We spent several months in the studio creating and writing," Maloney said. "We sang and played all the instruments but the programmed drums.

"Our goal is to get licensing/publishing [i.e movie soundtracks], commercials, TV shows, video games — anything, as there is a lot of musical content needed these days for all of the outlets for entertainment."