SAN FRANCISCO — There’s a shared skill among former NBA stars who played from 1991 to 2009. Many of them can do a solid imitation of the Dikembe Mutombo finger wag. After all, they saw the original up close.
Vernon Maxwell, a longtime guard, does a particularly strong version by adding the subtle trash talk few fans ever heard. Dropping into a deep voice Friday, the Florida native shifted into his version of a Congolese accent, wagged his index finger like a scolding schoolmaster and said: “Maxey, you better stay outta here. … Don’t come back down here.”
The key to the bit is to keep a wide smile behind the menacing finger.
That’s how Mutombo did it.
“He had a Cookie Monster laugh,” Jerome Williams, a nine-year NBA vet, said Friday. “Everybody knew he was having fun all the time. Those things just brought people to him.”
Mutombo, the charismatic 7-foot-2 center who registered 3,289 blocked shots — second only to Hakeem Olajuwon (3,830) in NBA history — died of brain cancer on Sept. 30. He was 58.
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Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game at Chase Center marks the first gathering of basketball’s greats since his passing. It’s an apt venue for Mutombo memories, as he was a marvelous All-Star Game performer. He set an All-Star Game record with 19 defensive rebounds and three blocks during the 2001 game in Atlanta. The eight-time All-Star had four blocks at the 1995 game in Phoenix — as an injury replacement for Cedric Ceballos.
We put one question to his contemporaries during a meeting at the Retired Basketball Players Association in a San Francisco hotel ballroom: What do you think about when you think about Dikembe Mutombo?
Antonio Davis, power forward/center, 1994-2006
Davis was a starter on the East squad that benefited from Mutombo’s record-setting 19 defensive boards (and 22 total) at the 2001 All-Star Game. It didn’t take much to jar his memory.
“Dikembe was really instrumental in us winning that game,” Davis said.
A West team led by Kobe Bryant ushered an 89-70 lead into the fourth quarter, so East coach Larry Brown shifted gears late in the game in a way that banked on Mutombo’s unique skill set.
“Larry Brown decided in those last six minutes, or whatever it was, that we were going to win that game,” Davis recalled. “At that point, everybody kinda checked their egos and said, ‘OK, what do we need to do?’ Larry decided to go with Dikembe and, really, four guards. When you’ve got Allen Iverson on your team and you’ve got these other guys pushing the ball up the floor and making things happen … they had no answer for that.
“He just told Dikembe: ‘Listen, all we need you to do is rebound and block shots.’ It all just kind of came together, and it was a beautiful thing.”
The East roared back to win 111-110, outscoring the West 41-21 in the fourth quarter.
Davis likes to tell modern players that they’re lucky they didn’t play in an era when dominating centers roamed the earth.
“I try to tell them, ‘You guys don’t have that night in and night out, where a guy like Dikembe is protecting the basketball at all angles,” he said. “You see these guys come flying in for all these dunks and all that? That wouldn’t have happened! Not with that guy!”
Mutombo was a special player and a special person, particularly off the court. Mutombo’s humanitarian efforts towered above his basketball career.
“Dikembe was, first of all, a phenomenal human being,” Davis said. “I lived in Atlanta. I attended a few of his events when he was raising money for special causes. I just remember him more off the court than I do on the court because of that wonderful work. It hurts to lose a man like that, especially a brother in this basketball community.”
Mutombo, in 2013, assisted with the NBA FIT All-Star Youth Celebration in Houston. (Brett Davis / USA Today)
Jerome Williams, power forward, 1997-2005
You wouldn’t figure a player nicknamed “Junkyard Dog” would need reassurance. But he was glad Mutombo was by his side.
“If you were with him,” he said, “you had nothing to worry about.”
That calming presence proved invaluable during a trip to Botswana. They were at a campsite late one night when someone in the group started listing the predators out in the darkness.
“They said, ‘Yeah, there’s hyenas out here, a few leopards,” Williams recalled. “They were naming all these animals, and Dikembe’s just like, ‘Don’t worry, Jerome. If they eat somebody, they eat me first.’”
Williams laughed at the memory.
“I told him, ‘No they wouldn’t! You’re too big for that! They’re going to run from you!’”
Williams, like Mutombo, played college ball at Georgetown. He remains forever grateful for the fraternity of big men that forged a bond back then. He said Mutombo helped to pursue his dreams with summertime runs with fellow Georgetown alums Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning. Williams said he and Mutombo often ended up on the same team.
Mutombo taught Williams that the art of shot blocking was using the “off arm” to disrupt the shooter.
“Hit ’em first, and then you go up and block the shot. That was his trademark,” Williams said. “His arm length was God-given, but nobody could block shots like Dikembe. That’s why he’s a Hall of Famer.”
More than anything, Williams remembers the trips to Africa. In 2007, he opened a hospital in Kinshasa, just outside of his hometown, and named it after his mother, Biamba Marie Mutombo.
The 300-bed facility has treated more than half a million patients. Mutombo funded $15 million of the $29 million project.
“That was a huge task. To have a guy like that, with that type of passion for reaching back, was great to see,” Williams said. “He’s the only person I would have gone to Africa with because he didn’t treat you like you were a guest. He treated you like you were a part of his family, which made you feel like you were a part of the African society family.”
Williams treasures a photo of himself as an honorary Zulu tribe member, along with fellow NBA players such as Darvin Ham and Marcus Camby.
“That’s what Dikembe did,” Williams said. “He accepted you where you were and made you feel like family.”
Vernon Maxwell, guard, 1989-2001
Maxwell was born in September 1965. Mutombo was born nine months later. But Mutombo’s wisdom and worldliness seemed to warp time.
“It just felt like he was way older than me,” Maxwell recalled. “Great father, great ballplayer. But the ballplayer stuff, that was just icing on the cake. I mean, he was just a great man.”
As a 6-foot-4, 180-pound guard, Maxwell never had to bang in the paint with Mutombo like other NBA alumni. But as someone who would drive the lane, Maxwell respected how the big man understood his craft.
“He just always knew the timing of the block,” he said. “You’ve got to be good off the feet, jump off the feet quick. And then, you’ve got to have long arms. He did that all his career. That’s what he was, an intimidator.”
Did he ever get you?
Maxwell laughed.
“Aww, yeah,” he said. “He got everybody.”
That meant Maxwell’s been a victim of Mutombo’s signature finger wag. But, like others, he recalled being more amused by it than annoyed. As a testament to his character, Mutombo could seem endearing, even while showboating.
“He was just a likeable guy, on and off the floor,” Maxwell said.
A Denver Nuggets staff member wore a shirt in reference to Dikembe Mutombo shortly after his death in 2024. (Ron Chenoy / Imagn Images)
Cliff Robinson, center/power forward, 1979-89, 1991-92
Listed at 6-foot-9, the career of the player nicknamed “Tree Top” — who played 11 NBA seasons with six teams — overlapped with Mutombo for a short time. They were two large ships passing in the night. Robinson played only a handful of games during his final season, 1991-92, which was Mutombo’s rookie season.
Still, they became friends. When asked about Mutombo, Robinson reached for his phone and scrolled until he found a photo of them smiling together.
“I love that man,” Robinson said. “That’s my dude right there.”
Because he was a tad older, Robinson grew up hearing shot-blocking wisdom from Bill Russell, the Hall of Famer who would be way up on the all-time blocks list if they had counted them through all of his pro days. In Mutombo, Robinson said, Russell had a worthy heir.
“I remember hearing Bill Russell talking over the years and saying, ‘Shoot, these guys block shots, but it goes out of bounds.’ And he took issue with that. Mutombo was able to block it and keep it in bounds.”
Mutombo led the NBA in blocks three times and was a six-time All-Defensive Team selection. But the more Robinson talked, though, the less that rebounding, blocks or anything else in the stat sheet compared to Mutombo’s larger imprint.
“It wasn’t about basketball with him. It was about life. It was about helping people,” Robinson said. “He used basketball just to get things so he could help more people.”
(Photo: Leigh Vogel / Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
