Dikembe Mutombo’s finger wag will live forever as one of NBA’s most iconic celebrations

Dikembe Mutombo, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame center and global ambassador for the NBA, died at the age of 58 from brain cancer, the league announced on Monday. Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mutombo was not just one of the most accomplished international players in NBA history, but one of the greatest rim protectors the modern game has ever seen. 

How else would a guy who averaged less than 10 points per game for his career make eight All-Star teams and end up in the Hall of Fame? To be fair, he was a bit better scorer than that number would indicate during his prime, but his legacy as a player lies in his 3,289 career blocked shots, which ranks second all-time behind only the 3,830 blocks tallied by fellow African-born legend Hakeem Olajuwon. 

It wasn’t the blocks, but the famous finger wag celebration with which Mutombo became synonymous that distinguished him during his playing days and continued, and will continue, to identify him to the masses of multiple generations.

Mutombo first broke out the finger wag in 1997 when he denied Clarence Weatherspoon on three straight point-blank shot attempts. 

Countless players across myriad sports have adopted the finger wag and applied it to their particular trade. It has become something of a universal “not in my house” gesture, and for anyone over the age of, let’s say 40 to be safe, only one person comes to mind every time you see it. 

“Whenever [someone does] the finger wag, nothing comes to mind but Dikembe,”  Patrick Ewing once said. “Like when people stick out their tongue, you don’t even have to say [Michael Jordan’s] name. You already know who they’re emulating.”

Speaking of Michael Jordan, one of the great pieces of behind-the-scenes footage came at the 1997 All-Star Game, where Mutombo was straight up telling Jordan, one of the most vicious and artistic dunkers imaginable, that he’d never dunked on him before. Jordan kept coming back at him, and Mutombo just stood his ground and kept denying MJ. It was almost poetically perfect in its symbolism. But of course, Jordan, who doesn’t forget a single slight, got his poster on Mutombo shortly thereafter and famously taunted the big man with a finger wag of his own. 

Michael Jordan using your own gesture against you is the ultimate sign of respect. Indeed, Mutombo put himself in the line of fire by instituting the finger wag, as it only made some of the greatest athletes in the world want to jam on him even more. He wanted, as they say, all the smoke. And he extinguished pretty much all of it. 

“Once he started to wag that finger, guys would get caught up and really try to challenge him,” Shawn Kemp told Max Blau back in 2014. “He was trying to get them to play his own game, which was [getting them to try] to attack him to make it easier for him to block shots.”

Kemp’s SuperSonics were on the wrong end of Mutombo in one of the most memorable playoff upsets in 1994 when the Nuggets, a No. 8 seed, upset top-seeded Seattle in the first round. Mutombo piled up 31 blocks in five games in that series. He was a generational shot blocker whose impact on lives outside of basketball actually far outweighed his Hall of Fame career. He will be missed by many forever.