Rest In Peace NBA Legend And World Class Humanitarian Dikembe Mutombo Who Has Passed Away At 58
Gonzalo Marroquin. Getty Images.
There are very few players who not only become a complete legend during their NBA career but then also become an even bigger legend off the court in their post-playing days. Dikembe Mutombo was one of those players, and hearing of his passing at the young age of 58 due to brain cancer is some gut-punching stuff. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I didn't even know he was sick, so to get that news on a Monday morning was quite a shock. Adam Silver could not have hit the nail any better in the first line of his statement. Dikembe Mutombo was larger than life, plain and simple. We'll probably never see a player like him on the court again
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and his patented finger wag is one of the most iconic moves the basketball world has ever seen. It didn't matter who you were, nobody was safe from being on the wrong end of that finger wag. I imagine that was one of the most deflating things you could experience during his era.
Aside from the basketball greatness, that really doesn't even come close to who he was as a human being and everything he did off the court. He sparked real change with the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation which helped improve lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He founded and built hospitals, he was a key figure in the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program, he founded and built schools, the list goes on and on. I think it's safe to say that as awesome as Mutombo was as a player, he was an even better human. As always, cancer is the fucking worst.
We also shouldn't overlook how awesome Mutombo was as an actor. His commercials to this day are still some of the best work ever done by an NBA player
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So simple, yet it gets a laugh out of me every time. The voice, the finger wag, it all plays even all these years later.
The world may have lost an icon today, but something tells me the legacy of Dikembe Mutombo will truly live on forever. A 1 of 1 player, and a 1 of 1 person. May he rest in peace.