DENVER, CO – MARCH 17: NBA Legend Dikembe Mutombo Smiles for the camera during half-time where the Los Angeles Clippers took on the Denver Nuggets on March 17, 2014 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2014 NBAE (Photo by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)
Yesterday we celebrated the legacy of achievments of one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders in the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One of his greatest mantras was: ‘Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
An NBA legend who embodied that is Dikembe Mutombo. Mutombo is one of the NBA’s All-Time leaders in blocks and has been heralded for his humanitarian work in his native Africa.
In 1997, Mutombo, a retired 19-year NBA veteran started the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to improve living conditions in his hometown of Congo. That earned him the NBA’s J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship award in 2001 and 2009.
He enjoys doing what he does and realizes that as a public figure, the higher that he’s gone up on the ladder, it is his surely his responsibility to send it back down. “You have to think about the future of our society,” Mutombo told me in a recent interview. “What are we leaving for the future of our grandchildren?”
What’s interesting is that he’s always been that way.
Need proof?
The former Denver Nugget, Atlanta Hawk, Philadelphia 76er, New Jersey Net, New York Knick and Houston Rockets big man once sat down with me during the 1997-98 season and schooled me on what he planned to do, what he was doing, the importance of achieving inside the classroom and what it was like playing for Georgetown University under ormer coach John Thompson. It was chronicled on a recent episode of Scoop B Radio.
Check out the 2015 Hall of Fame member Dikembe Mutombo and Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson
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