Dikembe Mutombo got the Hall call three times — and ignored it. He was at the gym late last week in North Atlanta, and he saw an unfamiliar number on his cell phone, so he let the call go to voice mail.
Turned out it was John Doleva, president of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and he was calling to tell Mutombo, who played four-plus seasons in the prime of his career for the Atlanta Hawks, that he had, in his first year of eligiblity, been elected to the Hall’s 11-person class of 2015.
“I took a long pause,” Mutombo said, speaking Monday after the official annoucement here. “I went and sat in a chair in my office. And I screamed so loud my place was wondering was what happening. ‘Mr. Mutombo, what’s going on? Are you in?’ I said yes, I was in. It got loud in my office. I called my wife. My kids were in school, so I texted them.”
Mutombo described the Hall of Fame as “my dream come true,” but his dream, at least as first, didn’t involve basketball. His older brother had played for the national team of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and kept hectoring his sibling to try the sport.
“I got hurt my first practice,” Mutombo said. “I didn’t want to be part of it. As a senior I played a little bit.”
His Georgetown scholarship was an academic one. “I was studying medicine,” he said, but Hoyas coach John Thompson persuaded him to give the sport another shot. Mutombo agreed, having little idea what he was getting into.
Thompson, Mutombo said, “told me I had a chance to work at McDonald’s one day. He pushed me so hard.”
That player would become the fourth pick in the 1991 NBA draft. After five seasons with the Denver Nuggets, he signed with the Hawks in the summer of 1997. He won two of his four Defensive Player of the Year awards for his work as a Hawk. (He was traded to Philadelphia in February 2001; he would win the award that season, too.)
Said Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer: “He was just such an incredible defender and rim protector. His personality too was large. I’m really happy for him. He is one of the great guys. He’s done so much off the court.”
Never a stylish scorer, the 7-foot-2 center was known as Mt. Mutombo. He ranks as the second-leading shot-blocker in NBA annals, but Mutombo became renowned as much for what he did after swatting a shot than for the block itself.
“This finger,” he said, extending his right index finger, “got me to the Hall of Fame.”
He would block a shot and wag his finger at the shooter, essentially saying, “No, no, no.” Said Mutombo: “It cost me a lot of money (in fines for taunting). I spent a lot of time on the phone with (then-commissioner) David Stern. I would say, ‘Mr. Commissioner, I cannot stop it.’ “
Mutombo, who retired after the 2009 season, has devoted himself to philanthropy in the Congo. In 2007, the $29 million Biamba Mutombo Marie Hospital, named for his late mother, opened outside Kinshasa. Mutombo donated more than half the money.
“I was fortunate to go back in the world where I came from,” Mutombo said. “One thing my dad said, ‘You want people to have good things to say when you’re no longer here.’ I think I’ve left my mark.”
On such a happy day, Mutombo thought of his father, who died in 2013: “I wish my dad was still alive. He was just so proud of my accomplishments. I wish he was here and could have seen this.”
Then Mt. Mutombo grew expansive. “They say when you’re the President of the United States, you can’t go any higher. When you play sports, this is the highest you can go. You become a great legend when you go into the Hall of Fame.”
