Dikembe Mutombo brought out best in Nuggets and best in people

For Cory Slater, it was love at first swipe. As Dikembe Mutombo stuck his left hand on Shawn Kemp’s hip and his right hand on history, blocking his eighth Seattle shot in the Nuggets’ iconic Game 5 win over the top-seeded SuperSonics, a kid in New Jersey knew he’d found his team and his player. His moment and his muse.

“I’m only 12 years old, and I had just gotten into sports,” Slater, now 42, told me Monday night by phone. “I didn’t know the significance of the Nuggets doing that. I didn’t know what that meant. But to sit and watch that, how everybody was just going crazy — I was a Nuggets fan ever since.

“In the ’90s, everybody had ‘their’ guy. He was ‘our’ guy. He made me a Nuggets fan. He made me not just a Nuggets fan, but a sports fan.”

Before Nikola Jokic, there was Mt. Mutombo. No. 55, who passed away Monday after a battle with brain cancer at the too-soon age of 58, brought the world to the Nuggets. And the Nuggets to the world.

“He was always globally-minded,” recalled former Denver teammate LaPhonso Ellis, a stalwart of those early ’90s squads, including the ’93-94 crew under coach Dan Issel that became the first No. 8 seed in the NBA Playoffs to ever upset a No. 1.

“And much of this may be where he was from (the Democratic Republic of Congo), but the reality is, a lot of people didn’t know he was raising two of his nieces and nephews before he ever raised any of his own children. Some of that was cultural. But to be able to handle that level of responsibility, and to give up yourself to take up that level of responsibility, says a lot about his character and who he was as a person.”

As to the “who,” Deke’s Instagram profile probably said it best: The Son of the Congo, DRC. CEO, NBA Global Ambassador, Humanitarian, Businessman, Father, and now…Hall-of-Famer.

Mutombo, who was drafted by the Nuggets out of John Thompson’s Georgetown dynasty in 1991 and spent the first five seasons of a storied 18-year NBA career in Denver, forever seemed bigger than the game. Although he excelled there, too: Mutombo, Rudy Gobert and Ben Wallace are the only players who’ve ever been named NBA Defensive Player of the Year four different times.

His was the rarest of legends, the kind we can close our eyes and conjure just from sounds alone. The thunk when his palm hit a basketball and swatted a shot five rows back. That laugh. The one that came from deep in the belly, deep in the soul, a thunderclap of sheer joy.

Whether through The Dikembe Mutombo Foundation or a wag of the finger, Deke gave better than he got. In an era of Jordan, Barkley and Hakeem, epic scorers, Mutombo made defense cool. When we think of epic blocked shots, his hands are the ones we go to. His was the finger that laughed last.

His joy was contagious. His reach was enormous. He was ferocious on the court but courteous and thoughtful off of it. His interests, and his circles, ran the gamut: Deke spoke nine languages and also cameoed — as himself — on the bawdy cartoon comedy “Family Guy,” while counting both the late Senator John McCain and fellow Hoya great Patrick Ewing as friends.

“I never got to see Bill Russell play,” Issel told me Monday. “But I think Dikembe is the best defensive player, in my mind, to ever play in the NBA.

“But I think because of his big personality and his booming voice and all of that, I think a lot of people remember his career after (playing), when he became an (ambassador for) the NBA, because of how much good he did around the world, but especially back in the Congo, his home country, that might overshadow what a great player he was.”

To most under 30, he’s the guy from the Geico commercials, wagging fingers and cracking wise. But to fans such as Slater, he was an inspiration. The latter grew up in New Brunswick, N.J., some 30 miles from Trenton. Nets/Knicks territory. He cast his lot with the Nuggets in the ’90s. Which would be a little like a sixth-grader today growing up an hour from the Dodgers and rooting for the Rockies anyway.

“Dikembe’s career, it did impress me. And the fact he was so internationally known and how (seriously) he took his love of people,” Slater continued. “I remember when they finally won the championship (in 2023). I started to cry.”

He came for Mutombo. He stayed for Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Slater was born with cerebral palsy. His dad took him to Knicks games, but what he remembers was New York fans teasing him. He also remembers, at the same time, watching Abdul-Rauf’s process at the free-throw line and thinking that anything is possible.