Dikembe Mutombo
The 7 ft 2 in (2.18 m), 260-pound (120 kg; 19 st) center is commonly referred to as one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players of all time, winning the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times. He was also an eight-time All-Star. On January 10, 2007, he surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the league’s second most prolific shot blocker, in terms of career blocked shots, in NBA history, behind only Hakeem Olajuwon. In the second game of the first round of the 2009 NBA playoffs, Mutombo suffered a knee injury that kept him out for the remainder of the postseason. Soon after the injury, Mutombo announced he had played his last game in the NBA.
Humanitarian work
A well-known humanitarian, Mutombo started the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to improve living conditions in his native Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997. His efforts earned him the NBA‘s J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award in 2001 and 2009. For his feats, Sporting News named him as one of the “Good Guys in Sports” in 1999 and 2000, and in 1999, he was elected as one of 20 winners of the President’s Service Awards, the nation’s highest honor for volunteer service. In 2004, he participated in the Basketball Without Borders NBA program, where NBA stars like Shawn Bradley, Malik Rose and DeSagana Diop toured Africa to spread the word about basketball and to improve the infrastructure. He paid for uniforms and expenses for the Zaire women’s basketball team during the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta. Mutombo is a spokesman for the international relief agency, CARE and is the first Youth Emissary for the United Nations Development Program. He has been a Global Ambassador for Special Olympics.
In honor of his humanitarianism, Mutombo was invited to President George W. Bush‘s 2007 State of the Union Address and was referred to as a “son of the Congo” by the President in his speech. Mutombo later said, “My heart was full of joy. I didn’t know the President was going to say such great remarks.“
On April 13, 2011, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health awarded Dikembe Mutombo the Goodermote Humanitarian Award “for his efforts to reduce polio globally as well as his work improving the health of neglected and underserved populations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Michael J. Klag, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, said “Mr. Mutombo is a winner in many ways—on the court and as a humanitarian. His work has improved the health of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital and Research Center is a model for the region. Likewise, Mr. Mutombo has been instrumental in the fight against polio by bolstering vaccination efforts and bringing treatment to victims of the disease.”
In 2012, the Mutombo Foundation, in partnership with Mutombo’s alma mater, Georgetown University, began a new initiative which aims to provide care for visually impaired children from low-income families in the Washington, D.C. region.
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