Hope is in the air all over the NBA map ... but honestly so is profound grief
2024 has been a year of legends lost throughout the NBA and it is impossible right now, even as a new season is starting, not to be deeply saddened by the death of Mister Ambassador: Dikembe Mutombo
LAS VEGAS — This is supposed to be the sunniest time of year on the NBA calendar.
All 30 teams, as of Tuesday morning, were back to work, back on the practice floor, basically back to school.
Hope is in the air in almost every NBA city with training camps underway leaguewide.
Yet sadness, sadly, is just as tangible. Monday delivered the tragic news bulletin that the colossal Dikembe Mutombo, Hall of Fame center and an even greater humanitarian, had died at the age of 58 due to brain cancer.
Another gut punch in a 2024 full of them.
Five teams — FIVE — had already announced in recent days that they would wear a tribute patch on their jerseys this season to pay homage to a legend lost.
The Trail Blazers for Bill Walton.
The Lakers for Jerry West.
The Magic for Pat Williams.
The Warriors for Al Attles.
The Suns for Al McCoy.
And now, just days after the death of longtime NBA player and coach Joe Wolf at just 59, we've lost Mount Mutombo. Dikembe was so beloved everywhere he played across his 18 seasons — Denver, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York and Houston — that it wouldn't surprise you if any (or all) or all those teams honored him in similar fashion.
These were giants of the game. Irreplaceable figures. Not enough can be said to properly acknowledge the legacies they left in this sport and beyond.
I will soon be in Springfield, Mass., for the 2024 Basketball Hall of Fame ceremonies on Oct. 12-13, and I already feel the tears welling up. West will be inducted for a historic third time as a contributor, in a nod to his peerless GM-ing and remarkable staying power in #thisleague for more than six decades, which will be plenty emotional itself. Now try to imagine the In Memoriam portion of the evening's program when figures from throughout the sport who died since the last induction ceremony are recognized. It is bound to be as poignant as we've seen for some time given the many pillars lost in recent months.
As for the incomparable No. 55 ...
That laugh.
That voice.
That Finger Wag. (Yes … those words must be capitalized.)
As soon you saw or heard any of it you knew instantly that it belonged to Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo.
"Larger than life," Commissioner Adam Silver said.
For all of Mutombo's shot-blocking and rebounding prowess, it's a sentiment that especially applied off the court. From the hospital he erected at an eight-figure personal cost in his native Congo to countless causes throughout Africa to his work as a global ambassador for the NBA, Mutombo was a peerless representative of the game and his continent.
As Silver is fond of explaining, "Mister Ambassador" or "Ambassador Mutombo" became the universal ways to address him. Such was Mutombo's worldly air.
From a selfish perspective, I can't help but flash back to the 1994 NBA Playoffs, not even three months after I began working on the NBA beat, when Mutombo's Denver Nuggets hauled themselves out of a 2-0 series hole to beat the 63-win Seattle SuperSonics in the first round of the playoffs in the league's best-of-5 days in Round 1. The image of Mutombo on the floor, clutching the ball in triumph as he laid on the floor, is one of the most memorable snapshots in league history.
Fellow Hall of Famer George Karl, who coached those top-seeded (and ill-fated) Sonics, could only respond with one word Monday when I tweeted my sentiments about that photo:
"Today is not a good day — not a good day for sports, for us, for us in Africa,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said as part of a moving but clearly draining remembrance of Mutombo's friendship and mentorship.
"But we will celebrate him big. Big. Because he set a path for us."
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Kobe Story Time
In Monday's Travelogue section of the latest This Week In Basketball compilation, I mentioned a few basketball stories from my many, many trips to Manchester over the past three decades.
Included was a reference to the best of those tales .... which featured Kobe Bryant and required more real estate to re-tell.
In the summer of 2012, I lived out a true dream scenario. As its beat writer for USA Basketball, ESPN sent me to England ahead of the 2012 Olympics to cover an exhibition game in my favorite city in Europe. That's right: Manchester was hosting a United States vs. Great Britain warm-up game that meant I actually had a paid work assignment that required me to visit the city I had been frequenting since the mid-1990s to watch Manchester City play.
Not long after getting to town that July, I immediately left my hotel for a walk on the most well-known street in the city centre: Deansgate. I was walking on one side of the street when, on the opposite side, I noticed someone clad in unmistakable USA Basketball gear and surrounded by what appeared to be a security detail.
It was Kobe.
It was Kobe just walking down the street and seemingly inviting attention with what he was wearing.
Because this was 2012 — and because, well, you are surely well aware by now of my limitations as a photojournalist — you have presumably deduced that I did not manage to take a photo to capture this crazy scene.
Luckily my friends at The Manchester Evening News did. It remains one of the most surreal scenes I have ever encountered because he was not immediately recognized by passersby.
Numbers Game
🏀 55
My fellow Substacker Justin Kubatko crafted a wonderful piece filled with statistical factoids from Mutombo's career that you should check out for a comprehensive review of No. 55's basketball achievements. Kubatko assembled 18 items about the four-time Defensive Player of the Year — one for each of Mutombo's 18 seasons in the NBA:
🏀 3
After the trade for Karl-Anthony Towns and even after his new contract kicks in next season, Jalen Brunson will be the third-highest paid Knick behind Towns and OG Anunoby.
🏀 3
The Knicks have now made three significant trades just since Dec. 30, 2023, to acquire Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Towns.
🏀 8
In his first eight seasons in Minnesota, Towns had seven head coaches and three general managers.
🏀 3
Did You Know? Julius Randle earned three All-Star selections, two All-NBA nods and a Most Improved Player award (2020-21) in five seasons as a Knick.
🏀 11
The Knicks and Timberwolves meet up for a preseason game in New York in a mere 11 days on Oct. 13. The first of the teams' two regular-season meetings is scheduled for Dec. 19 in Minneapolis.
🏀 2.5
I know you know but just in case it somehow eluded you: Former MVP Derrick Rose retired last week. I turn again to Professor Kubatko for the comprehensive piece he assembled to assess DRose's Hall of Fame chances ... which include a mere 2.5% probability scote based on Kubatko's model given how much injuries limited Rose's availability and production after his peak early years in Chicago:
🏀 4
There will naturally be calls from Rose's most ardent fans for the Bulls to retire his No. 1 jersey. Remember: Only four players in franchise history have received that honor. They are: Jerry Sloan (4), Bob Love (10), Michael Jordan (23) and Scottie Pippen (33).
🏀 12
Twelve of the 74 games on the NBA's preseason schedule will be played in non-NBA cities. That of course includes two Boston/Denver games in Abu Dhabi on Friday and Sunday and 10 more spread out across North America.
🏀 3
Three of those 10 games at non-NBA venues will be played in California: The Lakers are hosting two preseason games in Palm Desert and the Clippers will host another in Oceanside.
🏀 100
I am actually working on compiling a full list of how many Manchester City goals scored by Erling Haaland in competitive games that I have been blessed to witness in person, but I am proud to say off the top of my head that the list includes Nos. 1 and 2 (at West Ham in August 2022) and No. 100 (at home last month against Arsenal).
🏀 44
Many thanks to Portland-based reader Larry Matasar who wrote in to tell me that he enjoyed my recent travel escapades alongside my oldest of two boys and advised me that "you can keep doing it for a long time." Matasar said he took his son to Denver last spring for a Nuggets/Wolves playoff game because, as Blazers fans, they missed playoff basketball. "He is 44," Larry wrote.
🏀 32
Monday's Media Day festivities in Dallas began my 32nd season of continuous NBA coverage. Sometimes I have to say that out loud to believe it.
(Editor's note: I realize that, for the second consecutive week, our Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza has gone out on Wednesday. Profuse apologies from the publisher! Full disclosure: After somehow staying up until midnight Monday on my first night in Vegas and thinking that I had successfully changed my body clock without a hitch after two-plus weeks in Europe … I crashed Tuesday night at the embarassing hour of about 7 PM Sin City while in the midst of assembling this newsletter. Merely the latest reminder that — sigh — I am not as young as I once was.)
On our 48 Minutes podcast this week, I began with a tribute to Dikembe Mutombo and I mentioned the shot of him at the end of that 1994 series win over Seattle. It remains one of the most iconic scenes burned into my NBA brain ... and I went to my first NBA game in November 1966 (St. Louis Hawks @ Celtics). The Big Man will be missed and the world is a sadder place without him.
Yao Ming’s 2016 Hall of Fame acceptance speech is pretty damn sobering. Each of the legendary sponsors who sat beaming on stage as Yao spoke, Bill Russell, Bill Walton, and now Dikembe Mutumbo, have passed on.
Over the summer I wondered who held the title of “best non American to never play at the Olympics.” With honorable mention to Stein Line favorite Goran Dragic, the answer is Mutumbo. Unlike Dragic, who was fortunate enough to experience a stellar FIBA career despite Slovenia’s Olympic absences, Mutumbo’s native Congo🇨🇩 didn’t appear in so much as an AfroBasket tournament until Deke was close to retirement. As profoundly international as the man was, I wonder how he felt never experiencing national competition. He certainly more than made up for it to his country, continent and planet.
Mutumbo eventually became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2006. Was there ever any thought to his following in Hakeem Olajuwon’s footsteps of playing for Team USA? He could’ve really helped his adopted nation from 2000-2004, a time when his skill set and presence were sorely needed. The lack of three-second violations could’ve taken FIBA fingerwags to a different level.