Dikembe Mutombo is second all time in blocks and first in assists.
He helps people from Colorado to the Congo. The former NBA superstar didn’t just visit hospitals; he . He was voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Monday but this isn’t your regular immortal, no.
“He was an outstanding basketball player,” former Nuggets teammate LaPhonso Ellis said, “but in my opinion, a better person.”
The voice and the hoist. The swag and the finger wag. The blocks and boards and throwing ‘bows at schmoes. Depending on our age, we all remember Mutombo’s basketball career in different ways, but we should remember Mutombo as perhaps the greatest example sports has of athlete altruism.
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“From the very beginning, he always understood the big picture,” said Ellis, a teammate on the famed 1994 Nuggets. “For those during that time who thought he was just trying to maximize his salary for the sake of maximizing his salary — he understood the greater picture. He wanted to make as much cash as he could so he could have the greatest level of influence that he possibly could. As I think of those who’ve been able to do that, there may be some who understood that as equally as Dikembe did, but no one better.”
He spent $29 million to build the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital in the Congo, named for the big man’s mom. Mutombo was in our offices last week and beamed a smile as big as my head . (Seriously, I think it was as big as my head.) He gets it. He gets how basketball can make a man but shouldn’t define a man. Basketball should help make you a better man.
I just read an advance copy of “Not A Game,” about former Nugget Allen Iverson, Mutombo’s teammate on the 76ers team that won the 2001 Eastern Conference championship. Iverson has tossed away millions of dollars on excessive luxuries. A.I. gave basketball his heart but allowed his basketball celebrity, and all that went with it, to suffocate him like no defender ever could.
Mutombo, meanwhile, travels the world to partake in humanitarian missions as an official NBA global ambassador. The Dikembe Mutombo Foundation has won numerous awards for its work. President George W. Bush spoke of Mutombo’s charitable work in the 2007 State of the Union. Mutombo even befriended Nelson Mandela, of whom Mutombo said: “Mandela unified the nation through the sports — sports can change the community, sports can change the world.”
Mutombo is a man, too, let’s not forget. He’s made mistakes, one time infamously involving himself in , trying to buy gold from what turned out to be a Congolese warlord.
But Mutombo has transcended humanitarianism.
Be proud that he’s yours, Denver.
He is proud of where he began his pro career in 1991. He was famously photographed atop the Denver Athletic Club for his first Upper Deck basketball card — a big, budding man with big, budding dreams. When he visited The Denver Post last week, he was on his way to Fort Carson near Colorado Springs, where he met with the families of servicemen and women, touching lives with that long, famous finger.
“He’s a special person,” Larry Brown, his coach in Philadelphia, said Monday by phone. “The time I spent with him is something that I’ll always remember and cherish. I always talk to our kids (at SMU) about doing the right thing, making your teammates better and caring about our game and caring about people. He did that every day. He represented the league, all the coaches he played for, his teammates — he just made us all better just by being around him. I’ve been so lucky to have coached a lot of great players, and that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing — because people like Dikembe came into my life.”
Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or
