Dekkenberg-Mutombo, nickname: The Great Mountains of Africa
Career honors
4-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year (1995; 1997–98; 2001)
3-time NBA All-Defensive Team (1997-1998; 2001)
8-time NBA All-Star (1992; 1995-1998; 2000-2002)
When it comes to Dekkenberg-Mutombo, he is certainly best known for his signature move: shaking his fingers. This action has always been the exclusive domain of Mutombo in the league, and other players will receive a technical bag from the referee once they draw a picture of the tiger in the game, because this action represents a deep provocative meaning, especially after covering the opponent. The league issued a rule in 2007 that Mutombo could shake his finger in the audience but not on the player, and that other players were technical fouls.
The no-fly under the basket is the meaning of Mutombo's finger shaking, and this action and the name of "African mountains" can be said to be firmly remembered by the players of the same era. As the "African mountains" literally mean, Mutombo, who came out of the African Congo, is like a mountain in the league to guard the team's interior line.
The first black eight miracle in NBA history created by the Nuggets is also due to Mutombo's mountainous defensive performance, in the distant 1993-94 season, when the Seattle Supersonics won a record 63 wins in team history and led by a 2-0 score in the first two games of the first round of the playoffs, but the Nuggets won three consecutive games under Mutombo, and Mutombo's total of 31 blocks in five consecutive games is still the league's highest record.
From 1994 to 2002, Mutombo was named to the top 3 Defensive Players of the Year for nine consecutive seasons, and was named Defensive Player of the Year four times in his career, while only Ben Wallace achieved four DPOY achievements after Mutombo, with a career total of 3,289 blocks to rank second in league history.
Even Michael Jordan, the only successful dunk on Mutombo's head in his career, made him blow every time he saw Mutombo, although Mutombo did not admit that he thought it was the defense that made Jordan successful. Hakim Olajuwon, who plays on the inside with dreamy footsteps, also said of Mutombo: "His defense will make him famous, and his domination of the paint area is one of the best defenses I have ever seen".
In addition, Mutombo's career is also as calm as a mountain, taking 22 rebounds against the Nuggets at the age of 40 is still the oldest player to achieve this statistic, and the 42-year-old against the Warriors cut 10 points and 15 boards, which is called the oldest double-double player in the history of the league.
It is worth mentioning that Mutombo, who played for the Rockets as Yao Ming's substitute in the twilight of his career, was also called Uncle Mu by domestic fans, and Mutombo's age is always an unsolved mystery of the league, because there is no identity certificate of age recorded in the Congo tribe where Mutombo was born, and the age-keeping habit there is to count by planting trees, but after Mutombo went to the United States, the trees used to record age have long been destroyed, and now the officially recognized date of birth of Uncle Mu in the league is June 25, 1966. But this was actually made up by Mutombo after he came to the United States, and he himself did not know the exact date of birth. In the Congo, where he was born, there is nowhere to be found.
In 1991, When Mutombo joined the NBA, he was 25 years old, but teammates felt he was older than 30. At the time of his official age of 40, the Media in Houston at the time had obtained through dental identification that Mutombo's age was definitely more than 40 years old, probably more than 45 years old.