Dikembe Mutombo, basketball legend and universal synonym of blocking and defensive play, died this Monday in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 58. The 2.18 meter former Congolese player, a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame, died due to a brain tumor that he had been battling since 2022. “He was a person who simply went beyond reality. On the court he was one of the best blockers and defensive players in the history of the NBA, and off the court he gave his heart and soul to help others,” summarized Adam Silver, commissioner of the American league.
Mutombo played 18 seasons in the NBA, playing for Denver, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey. Eight appearances in the All Star, four awards for best defender of the year and three selections for the best quintet of the competition attest to the center’s stature as a player. A recurring image, however, is the one that best defines his sporting career: his slight shake of his index finger, as a refusal, directed towards the attacker who dared to challenge him under the rings. It became one of the most iconic celebrations in basketball, and one of the few with a defensive connotation.
“When I blocked a shot, people would still come up and try again. Then I started shaking my head a little after every blocked pitch. Those guys still didn’t listen to me, so I thought about making the finger gesture,” he explained at the time about his origins. “If I’m honest, I lost a lot of money for that gesture, and they called me a lot of technicals, but no referee dared to expel me from the game,” he added. In total, Mutombo placed 3,289 blocks throughout his career, a record only surpassed by Hakeem Olajuwon, who once called him a “dangerous player.”
Shaquille O’Neal defended him against those accusations: “He’s clean, but he’s just gigantic.” Reflecting on his achievements on the court, and also his controversies, the Congolese said he believed he was the owner of the painting. “The man cannot fly at Mutombo’s house. I felt like I was the boss, and no one could enter the painting if they didn’t knock on the door first and ask for permission,” he shared. Retired in 2009, at the age of 42, he averaged 9.8 points, 10.3 rebounds and 2.8 blocks in 1,196 games before definitively devoting himself to the defense of humanitarian causes.
Mutombo, who spoke nine languages, founded his own foundation in 1997. His activism focused on improving health, education and quality of life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his country of origin. Son of a school principal in Kinshasa, the capital, and a housewife who sold bottles of Coca-Cola when she could at the stadium. Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, he grew up dreaming of being a doctor and ended up playing basketball due to the efforts of his father and one of his ten brothers. As a young man he had shown more interest in football and martial arts, and when he got a scholarship to study medicine at Georgetown he wasn’t even really interested in developing his game. John Thompson, his first coach in the United States, convinced him to take it seriously by introducing him to Bill Russell, legend of the Boston Celtics.
