Dikembe Mutombo was an African Giant

On Monday morning, word got out that the NBA’s all-time great humanitarian and superstar center Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo had passed away from brain cancer, at the far too young age of 58. I recite his full name because I know it by heart, and would trot it out as a party trick in middle school when the Nuggets would be playing on a silent TV. I learned it from an article of grail-like ephemera, a vintage shirt that I had gotten second hand from a cool older cousin, that stretched the entirety of his name down its back in a long column.

With hindsight, the shirt and that sprawling, un-Anglicized name explains what I associate with Dikembe: His joyful embrace of his otherness, as international players began weaving themselves into the fabric of the league. His peer, countryman, and fellow legend from the continent, Hakeem Olajuwon, the only player in NBA history who blocked more shots than he did, was an otherworldly prodigy, a literal alien — the quiet, noble ascetic, the highly coordinated soccer player who hit a growth spurt but still played basketball with a midfielder’s nimble finesse. Mutombo was different. He was all length, a poorly constructed avatar made entirely of right angles that could scratch its knees without bending over, with dimensions that didn’t quite make sense being piloted awkwardly by a crew of tiny Eddie Murphys. His deep gargle-rasp of a voice emanated either from his chest or a cloud formed in his image over the skies of Kinshasa. His game was at once utilitarian, built on the ass-and-elbows unglamorous side of basketball that rarely mints stars, and something miraculous, powerful and electrifying, built on reflex and quick-twitch ferocity. The rolling thunderous dunk, the perfectly read rebound, the block — it was the composition of a hooping cartoon character who had escaped Toonville and broken into our reality.

With the exception of Michael Jordan dunking, legs splayed and arms extended in iconic silhouette, was any player ever more associated with a single act than Dikembe was with the block? We all know the Geico commercial, but I think we lose sight of that commercial’s real insight into Dikembe, what makes the ad sing. It’s the conceit of Dikembe blocking laundry and boxes of cereal, it’s the mischievous glee that defined his on-court presence. Blocking a ball is a hostile act, one man asserting his strength, size and dominance over another, in rejection. We’ve seen all manner of violent blocks from other big men, screaming profanity in the face of a would-be shooter or dunker, standing over them splayed out on the floor for an uncomfortable length of time. With Dikembe and his accent finger wag it never felt that way. Dikembe would smile and wave that squeegee-length digit playfully, a gesture full of good-natured teasing. It’s how he transformed The Block, as an idea, from a semi-common defensive play to an article of culture, and was a reminder that, at its core, basketball was still a child’s game, and he was the game’s biggest child, delighted to still be playing.

But of course no single moment, no eye popping stat line could equal what he gave back to the world offcourt. Many athletes pay lip service to pet causes and charities, but Mutombo turned giving, and fighting, into his career and his legacy. Immediately after he was drafted, he spent his off-seasons visiting refugee camps. He was a partner with the Special Olympics, a champion of women’s rights and women’s health issues in parts of the world where that advocacy was crucial. The one-time medical student brought hospitals named after his mother and schools to his native Congo, was an ambassador for the game who paved the way for some of today’s great African players, and won many more off-court awards than he ever did on court for those efforts. Long after retiring, whenever you heard “Dikembe Mutombo” attached to a story, you knew the scope would be both meaningful and heartwarming. It was an extension of his generous, thankless game. The underprivileged, the handicapped, the oppressed — everyone had a place in Mount Mutombo. Much like he was as a player, he was nearly a caricature, an exaggerated representation of what a decent, moral crusader could be, dedicating his post playing life to service and making the world a better, more equitable place.

On the court, he was the middle son in John Thompson’s trilogy of sainted big men. He had a decorated 18-year career, with an incredible four DPOYs in a seven-season stretch. He was a major piece of the 6ers Iverson squad that made a Finals run, and was better and more important than you remember next to Yao Ming and TMac in Houston under Jeff Van Gundy. But I’d argue he was at the peak of his powers at his first of many stops, in Denver. It was an era when you could still build a team around a player as singularly focused as Dikembe, who averaged 16.6 points a game his rookie campaign then saw that number slowly and steadily decline. The beloved 1994 team, a young squad of shooters around Mutombo, coached by Dan Issel, is the obvious favorite of many, because it delivered one of the great upsets in NBA history, when Dikembe’s eight-seed Nuggets beat the powerhouse Sonics at the peak of George Karl and Shawn Kemp’s elegant transition dunk machine in Seattle. The Nuggets came back from down 2-0 to win a best-of-five series, which likely contributed to David Stern throwing out the format eight years later, unwilling to risk a regular season powerhouse ever having their season cut short by a scrappy, unkillable underdog like Dikembe’s Nuggets again.

That series ended with a Game Five in which Dikembe turned in a distinctly Mutomboian stat line: 8 points, 15 rebounds and 8 blocks, but was punctuated, as the final buzzer sounded, with one of the NBA’s great, indelible images, a necessary inclusion in any clip reel attempting to explain the ancient pull the league has over its diehard followers: Mutombo is protecting the ball after gathering a missed shot, then falls to the ground as the game and series ends, fully extended under the hoop, holding the ball above his head like a newborn Lion King, worshiping it like the sun, then bringing it to his chest and rolling over, spooning with it as he laugh-cries in disbelief that this David, this warrior who defied the incredible odds against him, had slain a Goliath. It’s one of the genuine, unreplicable, unstageable moments of pure emotion you can only get from sports. It was also one of the very few times in his career, or his life, Mutombo allowed a moment that was just for himself.