Dikembe

This past week saw the passing of a couple of famous US sports figures. One was a professional baseball player named Pete Rose. The other was a professional basketball player by the name of Dikembe Mutombo. I say US sports figures because the Congolese Mutombo not only became famous in the US, he became a US citizen in in 2006.

I was a big fan of Rose in my younger days. He was an intense and talented athlete that, through a very long career, ended up being one of the greatest players of all time. He also, in the end, turned out to be a bit of a schmuck. I had forgotten, or was not aware, how terrible he was until this week when I read some accounts of his storied career. The contrast between Mutombo and Rose couldn’t be more striking.

Mutombo also had a long and amazing career as a professional athlete. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but he was a man of considerable integrity who spoke something like nine languages and gave of his time and wealth to help those less fortunate. His list of humanitarian accomplishments exceeds those of his basketball career. And he literally, and figuratively, rubbed off on me. I should explain.

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In autumn of 1991 while working at a boarding school in western Switzerland, I received an invitation to visit the family of one of my students in Denver, Colorado. I should say that it wasn't uncommon for me to receive invitations like this. One year I went to the small country of Andorra where I stayed with the family of a student. The dad and I became relatively good friends and on one occasion he gave a friend of mine and I the keys to his Land Rover to tour around the country for the day. Another family invited me to stay with them at their chateau/vineyard in the south of France for a couple of days. And there were some other notable invitations that I will write about some other time.

André and I weren't very far apart in age and ended up being good friends. He was also mature for his age and I was conveniently immature for my age. Though his family was rather comfortable financially, his father was a Swiss Ambassador to the US and his mother was an American business woman, he seemed very level-headed, particularly compared many of his “rich school” peers. 

* * *

Part of what was behind the invitation was that André's mother had tickets to a Denver Nuggets basketball game. Thanks to the internet, I had help in pinning down that the date of the game was Dec. 28 of that year. But I didn’t need the internet to remember their opponent – the Boston Celtics. It was one of the most famous teams in NBA history featuring Larry Bird, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale among others. I should say that I was on board with going to the Nuggets game even before I learned who they were playing against. The Nuggets, on the other hand, were not a huge draw. Mutombo was only in his second season as a professional (though already well-known) and they were not playing very well.

The plan was to fit the visit into my Christmas travel that year. I would fly from Geneva to Idaho to see family for the holiday, then head to Denver on Dec. 27^th, attend the game on the 28^th and then carry on back to Switzerland on the 29^th.

* * *

André’s mother worked for a sports entertainment company that had ties to the Nuggets which is where the tickets came from. It turned out that they had four tickets and André and I would be accompanied by his uncle and, to be honest, I can’t remember who the fourth person was.

His uncle drove us to the game. We knew we would have decent parking given that André’s mother gave us a VIP parking pass along with the four tickets. Sure enough, we ended up parking in the same lot as the players, adjacent to McNichols Sports Arena. We were off to a good start.

* * *

Once inside the arena, we had to find our seats. None of our crew had ever used these season tickets before so none of us knew were we were going. Also, the numbers on the tickets were a bit cryptic and didn’t give us a clear indication as to where our seats were. We approached the event staff as we entered and a guy motioned us to proceed down into the lower section. I was thinking that this keeps getting better. I hadn’t attended many professional sporting events by that time and I certainly had never been seated in the low section near the action.

We continued to walk down the steps but our ticket numbers still didn’t correspond to anything we were seeing labeled on the seats. As we reached the bottom, we showed our tickets to another event staff who told us to “come this way” as she proceeded towards the floor. We were getting pretty excited thinking that we would be in the floor section. But it would get even better.

The woman escorted us onto the hardwood to four folding chairs that were at the end of the Denver bench. Unless we had Nuggets uniforms, we couldn’t have had better seats. I remember at the time thinking that, as a sporting event experience, it’s unlikely that I will ever do better than this. So far that’s still the case and I don’t see that changing.

* * *

We had to determine among ourselves who would get the seat next to the players. We quickly decided that, since there are four quarters and four of us, we would rotate each quarter.

As the players warmed up and we were soaking it all in, a guy came over, introduced himself as the General Manager of the Nuggets and welcomed us to the game. Then a lady came and asked us what we wanted to eat or drink (something that would continue throughout the game). Then the GM came back and said that he was going to try to arrange for us to meet Larry Bird, but no promises.  The whole thing seemed a bit surreal.

What we found out later was that the tickets we were using were held by the Nuggets organization for real VIPs (celebrities and so forth). I’m quite sure that the GM didn’t know who we were nor did it matter. Whoever was there was usually important and protocol was to treat them well. On this occasion, for whatever reason (maybe the holidays?), no famous and/or rich people were on hand and four nobodies would fill the seats. Which is strange given that the Celtics were in town. Anyway, we were loving it.

against Parrish and the Celtics but not from the game I watched

Throughout the game, Denver surprisingly maintained a lead. Bird was struggling a bit and we found out later it was due to his sore back. Though I was indifferent about who was winning, it’s always nice to be in an arena where the hometown fans are happy. It added to the ambiance. We did speculate, however, that if Bird played poorly and/or the Celtics lost, it might impact our chances of meeting him. In the end, our speculation proved to be correct.

* * *

I remember that I was given the seat closest to the players in the fourth quarter. In retrospect, it turned out to be the best option. As the final quarter began, the seat to my left was open. There was one more chair than there were players on the bench. But midway through the period, Mutombo was whistled for a foul as he was defending Parrish. In addition to being upset about it, it was his fifth foul and he was pulled from the game to prevent him from getting his sixth and final foul.

Happily, the angry Mutombo went straight to the open seat at end of the bench – right next to me. The trainer tossed him a towel and handed him a water bottle. In his frustration he slammed the towel on the floor in front of him and unexpectedly turned to me and shouted in a Congolese accent, “He’s all over me! He’s been all over me all night!” I was caught off guard and honestly don’t remember how I responded. I’m pretty sure it was some sort of wide-eyed awkward mumble of affirmation. The guy was 7’2 (2.18m) and angry. Agreement seemed to be the sensible option.

He continued to grumble as his sweat increasingly dampened the left side of my jeans. That turned out to be our only “interaction” and within about fifteen minutes he was put back in the game. 

Admittedly, I followed his career more closely after that. It wasn’t easy given that there was no internet back then and NBA basketball was difficult to track from Switzerland. He had an impressively long career, particularly for a big man, playing for 6 different teams over 18 seasons and retiring in 2009. It's sad that he's gone.

* * *

Fun fact: Mutombo’s full name was Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jaques Wamutombo.

Another fun fact: Mutombo moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the US at the age of 21. Next year I will begin my 21^st year in Africa. It could be that we’ll end up with a similar amount of years on the continent. Crazy thought.