The NBA announced on Monday morning that former Sixer, Hall-of-Famer, and former NBA Global Ambassador Dikembe Mutombo died after a battle with brain cancer. He was 58.
Mutombo is widely considered one of the best shot-blockers in NBA history. A four-time Defensive Player of the Year and eight-time All-Star, Mutombo was drafted out of Georgetown in 1991 by the Denver Nuggets.
Over his 18-year NBA career, Mutombo played for the Nuggets, the Sixers, the Atlanta Hawks, the New Jersey Nets, and the New York Knicks before closing out his career with the Houston Rockets from 2004-2009.
During his Philadelphia tenure, which lasted just 106 games, he and fellow Georgetown alum Allen Iverson led the Sixers to an NBA Finals appearance. While his time in Philadelphia was short, his career was arguably one of the most dominant of his career – he won Defensive Player of the Year, led the league in blocks, and was named to the All-Star team, the first All-Defensive team, and the second All-NBA team.
But you didn’t need to have Mutombo on your team to feel his massive impact on the game of basketball. Standing at 7’2”, he earned the nickname “Mount Mutombo” for his defensive prowess and shot-blocking skills. With a career 3,289 blocks – many of them followed by his signature finger wag – Mutombo ranks second behind only Hakeem Olajuwon. He made the first and second All-Defensive teams three times each and had multiple All-NBA nods.
Perhaps Mutombo’s greatest legacy though is his extensive humanitarian work off the court. Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mutombo was named the inaugural NBA Global Ambassador in order to expand basketball’s footprint across the globe.
His Dikembe Mutombo Foundation sponsored the construction of a hospital near his hometown – the first medical facility built there in nearly 40 years. Named after his late mother, the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital has been in operation since 2007. His other humanitarian efforts ranged from the Special Olympics to Basketball Without Borders to championing gender parity efforts in his home country. To date, Mutombo is the only person to receive the NBA’s annual J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award twice, including once during his Sixers tenure.
Inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015, Dikembe Mutumbo leaves behind an enormous impact on the game of basketball across the globe. He will certainly be missed.
