Dikembe Mutombo, the beloved basketball player who spent the first five seasons of his Hall of Fame career in Denver, died Monday from brain cancer, the NBA announced. He was 58.
His family revealed in 2022 that he was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor in Atlanta. The league said in a statement that he died surrounded by loved ones.
The 7-foot-2 center introduced his iconic finger wag celebration and earned the nickname “Mt. Mutombo” when he was a burgeoning star for the Nuggets. He led the NBA in blocks three consecutive seasons and won his first Defensive Player of the Year award with Denver in 1995. And he was on the 1993-94 team that came back from a 2-0 series deficit against the Seattle SuperSonics to become the first No. 8 seed to upset a No. 1 seed in NBA playoff history.
In what remains one of the most indelible images in franchise history, Mutombo seized the final rebound of the series, held onto the ball for dear life and melted to the floor as time expired and Denver’s 98-94 win went final, beaming while his teammates celebrated around him.
“If you go down to my office, I have three pictures up,” said Nuggets coach Michael Malone, who overlapped with Mutombo in New York during the 2003-04 season, when Malone was an assistant for the Knicks. “And one of the pictures in my office is of Dikembe Mutombo, as an eight-seed, beating Seattle the one-seed, lying on the floor with the ball in his hands and that beautiful smile.”
During and after his playing career, Mutombo was known for his humanitarian work. He was designated a global ambassador for the NBA and served on the boards of several organizations, including Special Olympics International, the CDC Foundation and the National Board for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, he promoted vaccines in Africa and North America alongside Anthony Fauci.
While he was playing for Atlanta in 1997, he founded the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to support health, education and quality of life in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. The foundation raised funds for the construction of a school in the village where his late father grew up, .
“Dikembe Mutombo was simply larger than life,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “On the court, he was one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players in the history of the NBA. Off the floor, he poured his heart and soul into helping others.”
Mutombo went on to play for the Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Nets, New York Knicks and Houston Rockets before retiring from basketball after the 2008-09 season. He won Defensive Player of the Year four times and made eight All-Star teams, six All-Defensive teams and three All-NBA teams.
“Don Chaney was our coach (in New York), and we’d always want our big guys to be able to talk loud,” Malone said, slipping into an impression of Mutombo’s famously gravelly voice as he continued. “But if you know Dikembe, he could not talk very loud. And Don Chaney used to get so upset. Like, ‘Dikembe, you’ve got to talk louder.’ But he was great. … Loved his personality. Loved his heart. You could just tell he was a hell of a basketball player, but he was an even better person. And people always say that, but I think Dikembe Mutombo really embodied that. Just a big, big heart who was always trying to give back to anybody.”
When Mutombo’s career ended, his best numbers were still with the Nuggets: 12.9 points, 12.3 rebounds, 1.7 assists and — most importantly — 3.8 blocks per game. His 391 games in a Denver uniform were the most he played for any team.
“That organization made me the face of the team and the face of the city, and it made me their franchise player,” Mutombo told The Denver Post in 2020. “… I don’t know, if I’d gone to some city that is very flat, like other cities in America where there’s no mountains, would they have called me Mt. Mutombo? You cannot forget where you were born. Itap because of the city of Denver that Mt. Mutombo was born. I think Dikembe Mutombo’s career was born with the Denver Nuggets.”
Speaking about Mutombo to reporters on Monday, Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid, who was born in Cameroon, said he looked to the former Nuggets star as an inspiration.
“Itap a sad day, especially for us Africans, and really the whole world,” Embiid said. “Other than what he’s accomplished on the basketball court, I think he was even better off the court. He’s one of the guys that I look up to, as far as having an impact, not just on the court, but off the court. He’s done a lot of great things. He did a lot of great things for a lot of people. He was a role model of mine. It is a sad day.”
Former Nuggets executive Masai Ujiri, now the Toronto Raptors team president, was so overcome with emotion that he had to pause several times while speaking to reporters about Mutombo’s death on Monday.
“It’s really hard to believe,” Ujiri said. “It’s hard for us to be without that guy. You have no idea what Dikembe Mutombo meant to me. … That guy, he made us who we are. That guy is a giant, an incredible person.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
