Recognition: Dikembe Mutombo, a Basketball Hall of Fame player, had an impact far beyond the game

The finger wag. The huge smile. The unmistakable voice. Dikembe Mutombo played defense at a level and with a flair that few others in basketball history have ever possessed – and these are just a few of the reasons he is enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

He stopped people on the square.

Off the field, he helped people.

In its simplest terms, that is the legacy of Mutombo, the 7-foot-tall mountain of a center who died Monday, about two years after his family revealed he had brain cancer. The tributes began as soon as the news broke and never stopped. Current and former players. Team and league leaders. Even world leaders; Barack Obama, who hosted Mutombo at the White House on more than one occasion, also took part, as did Felix Tshisekedi, the president of Congo, Mutombo’s home country.

They all said the same thing in different ways. Mutombo has touched lives in one way or another.

“Dikembe Mutombo was an incredible basketball player – one of the best shot blockers and defensive players of all time,” Obama wrote on social media on Monday. “But he also inspired a generation of young people across Africa and his work as the NBA’s premier. “The global ambassador has changed the way athletes think about their impact off the court.”

If Mutombo wanted something done, it got done. He built a hospital in the Congo and this facility – named after his mother – has now treated around 200,000 people. He worked tirelessly for the Special Olympics, for UNICEF and for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He traveled the world, he encouraged NBA executives to visit Africa, he fought for change. He was the first and still the only person to win the NBA’s J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award twice.

“His legacy of things he did off the field will long outlive the things he did on the field,” one of his former coaches, fellow Hall of Famer Dan Issel, said Monday.

Issel coached Mutombo in Denver, where they were part of the first 8-seed beats 1-seed upset in NBA playoff history, in which the Nuggets defeated Seattle in a best-of-5 series in 1994 and Mutombo on End landed When it was over, he landed flat on his back on the floor, holding the ball above his head with absolute joy on his face.

That was an iconic moment. But Mutombo’s most iconic move was the finger wag – which he erupted after blocking a shot, his index finger moving back and forth as if to say “No, no, no” to the shooters he had just turned back . It’s legendary. It didn’t start out that way.

“I think he was called for a technical test the first time he did it,” Issel said. “And so the NBA made the rule that they liked it so much that they just didn’t want him to do it in front of anyone.” After that, they said, “Hey, if you turn to the crowd and point the finger.” If you shake, it’s okay. ‘Just don’t do it in front of the face of the player you just blocked.’”

Mutombo spent 18 seasons in the NBA, playing for Denver, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and the then-New Jersey Nets. The 7-foot-2 center from Georgetown was an eight-time All-Star, four-time Defensive Player of the Year and three-time All-NBA selection and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015 with averages of 9.8 points and 10.3 rebounds per game in his career.

His speech in Springfield, Massachusetts, on the evening of his inauguration lasted about 9 minutes. And he probably spent 8 1/2 of those minutes talking about everyone else instead of his own successes. He had John Thompson, his Georgetown coach, and then-former NBA commissioner David Stern on stage as his Hall of Fame presenters. From Thompson he learned basketball and how to look at the world. From Stern he was given the opportunity to use the NBA platform to help change the world. He couldn’t have thanked any of them enough.

“The spirit of Dikembe Mutombo will never be forgotten,” said Philadelphia guard Kyle Lowry, who was Mutombo’s teammate in the center’s final NBA season – with Houston in 2008-09. “I think everyone who’s ever been there has ever been there.” Part of him knows what a great man he was, he’s got a great family, great kids. This is a great loss for our league, our world.”

There will be no more finger wagging. That voice – it was compared to Cookie Monster, and Mutombo always saw the humor in it – was silenced. Mutombo is gone. It’s not the legacy. It will never be that.

And if someone had to sum up Mutombo’s remarkable life in one sentence, perhaps there would be no better choice than the one with which he himself concluded his Hall of Fame speech.

“I may not have won the championship,” he said that night, “but I am a champion to so many people.”

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AP Sportswriters Pat Graham and Dan Gelston contributed.

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