Mutombo believes in ‘ big’ basketball
Hall of Famer says play in paint still possible
Di kembe Mutombo played 18 seasons in the NBA, almost 1,200 games in which he attempted more than 8,000 shots.
Was any one of them a three-pointer?
Mutombo leans his head back and laughs.
“Oh, come on. I’m 0-for-1,” he says. “I took one. I tell my kids, ‘ Daddy got his chance to take one.’” It didn’t go in. “No,” he says. He laughs again.
Mutombo, 50, is in town to promote FlipGive, a startup in which he’s an investor — more on that later. At the moment, the focus is on the justfinished NBA Finals and the league’s three- point revolution. The game has changed drastically and it’s often noted players like Mutombo, who finished a Hall of Fame career less than a decade ago, would have little value today.
Mutombo, not too surprisingly, pushes back against that narrative.
“Steph Curry changed the definition of the three-point line. I don’t think we have a three- point line anymore,” he says, adding the number of shots bombers like Curry attempt from all over the court mean the old 22- foot three- pointer is no longer special. Mutombo, grinning again, says they should be giving four or five points for some of the deep shots now attempted semi-regularly.
But the four- time Defensive Player of the Year, who retired with the secondmost blocks ever, says he still thinks the stay- at- home big man has a future in the NBA. With so many teams going small and spreading the floor with shooters, he suggests, the opportunity is there for a team to pound a short lineup down low. “All layups,” he says. Does he think a team is leaning this way?
“It depends on the coaches,” he says. “The coaches ...”
Mutombo stops in midsentence, puts one of his massive hands to his forehead, and giggles a little. He has thoughts on coaching, but he doesn’t quite know where to begin.
He’s similarly chagrined by the notion of today’s “superteams,” saying there were great teams in his era, but no one acted like they were unbeatable.
“Back then they used to say, ‘ The NBA is no good because there are only eight good teams.’ And now, they say there are only two. Come on,” he says. “But I don’t recall when we saw a playoff year where a team starts running over teams all the way to the final.”
As the leader of an eighth- seeded Denver team that upset 63- win Seattle in the first round in 1994, he knows a little about not conceding until the games are played.
But if it sounds like Mutombo is just an old guy yelling at clouds, it’s worth noting he is putting his theories in action, to a point. Two of his school- age sons play basketball now, both of them tall for their age. Do they shoot threes?
“Not when I’m around,” he says. “When I’m not around, they shoot threes, but when I’m around, I say, son, you are going to get to the block. No one will stop you.”
Having children in sports is one reason Mutombo became involved with FlipGive, a Toronto-based fundraising site that allows youth teams to register with the service, then directs a percentage of money spent with various online retailers like Amazon and Under Armour back to the team.
He knows how expensive youth sports can be, especially for someone who has not made his kind of money. He’s speaking from experience there, too: as a kid in Congo, Mutombo’s only sport was soccer, using a ball fashioned out of plastic bags.
“I was good at it,” he says about the homemade ball. “I can still do it today.”
Mutombo also coaches young kids, but says his interest in that line of work stops there. An NBA job is not in his future.
“I love my bed and I love my sleep,” he says.
If nothing else, this deprives us of the chance to see someone who would swim rather aggressively against the NBA tide.
“The flip of the game happened in the last three to five years, and I think it will flip back,” he says. “When I was playing, there was David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dikembe Mutombo, Mark Eaton, Alonzo Mourning, you name it. There were so many bigs and then we retired.
“We need another big man to come in and establish himself, and then other teams will try to do the same thing.”
How about Anthony Davis in New Orleans?
“Eh, he’s a power forward,” Mutombo says. “You might call him a centre.”
Emphasis on the “you.” More chuckling.
“It’s hard to see a big man today who doesn’t want to leave the paint,” Mutombo says. “Even at the ( highschool) level, the big men all want to shoot the three for some reason.”
It is pointed out this is because the three is worth more points, but Mutombo waves it off.
A team could still be successful the “old” way, he insists, but they have to have a big man who can move, and they have to be committed to scoring in the paint, he says.
At this point, in today’s NBA, it’s not much more than a thought experiment, if an interesting one.
“It’s a mindset. It depends on a group of guys deciding what to do,” Mutombo says. “Basketball is a game of five. You want to play a game of one, go play tennis.”