Stephen A's Take: Tribute to NBA Great Dikembe Mutombo, on his passing.

Stephen A. Smith is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Executive Producer, host of ESPN's First Take, and co-host of NBA Countdown.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I want to take time to pay tribute to a
legend we lost today in the world to basketball. The
NBA announced this morning that Hall of Famer the one
and only the Kenba Mutumbo passed away after a battle
with brain cancer. He was fifty eight years old. But
Tumbo was the league's first global ambassador for the game.

(00:24):
He was also a humanitarian who loved what basketball did
for communities around the world, including his native Democratic Republic
of Congo. I knew to kem Bae mc tumbo personally.
I covered him during this couple of years in Philadelphia
when they went to the NBA Finals in two thousand
and one. If you recall, Theo Ratlers started off the
season as their center. He was six or nine and
an extraordinary shot blocker. But he wasn't somebody who'd end

(00:47):
up being a four time Defensive Player of the Year
and finishing the top three in Defensive Player of the
Year voting seven times in his career like to Kimba
mc tumbo had been and was. No matter what the
Kemba mc tumble was as a person as a player,
it's nothing compared to what he was as a person.
Knowing him personally, he was simply an angel, one of

(01:07):
the nicest human beings you'd ever want to meet in
your life. I have never ever, in all my years
of covering professional basketball, heard anyone say a negative word
about the campaign mu Tumbo. He was that beautiful of
a person. What a wonderful guy he was. I want
to take a moment to share a little story with

(01:28):
y'all because I used to teach him about this all
the time. He was an elite defensive player, but offensively challenged,
and I used to get on him because he would
throw up the hook shots all the time. It was
an ugly looking hook shot, sometimes winning, sometimes it didn't.
He was seven to two after all, and I remember
one time I went to and talked to him about
the hook shot. He said, Steve, Steve, Kareem Kareem. I said,

(01:54):
don't you ever say that publicly. Don't you ever utter
those words out of your mouth public He was trying
to say, compare it to the skyhook, Kareem abdu Jabal,
And then he just laughed at affectionate, beautiful laugh that
he had all the time, letting me know that he
was just joking that he would never ever try to
compare himself to the great Kareem abdu Jabal when it
came to that skyhook, But he was just teasing me

(02:16):
about it or what have you. But we always joked
about it. Every time that I saw him, I knew
he was ill. I had no idea he was that ill.
And when I heard the news this morning, I, like
I imagine most people in the NBA circles, shed a tear
because what a wonderful, wonderful human being he was, and
what an incredible human being the world of basketball has lost.

(02:40):
The great to kim Ba mu Tumble, the one and
only to ken Ba mu Tumble. My sincereous condolences to
his family and his loved ones. Everywhere the basketball world
mourns an incredible, incredible loss today