The finger wagging. The huge smile. The unmistakable voice. Dikembe Mutombo played defense at a level and with a flair that few others in basketball history ever possessed, all one of the many reasons why he has been immortalized in the Hall of Fame.

He stopped people on the field.

Off the field he helped people.

In the simplest terms, that’s the legacy of Mutombo, the six-foot mountain of a center who died Monday, about two years after his family revealed he was dealing with brain cancer. The tribute started when the news broke and never stopped. Current and former players. Team and competition directors. Even world leaders; Barack Obama, who had hosted Mutombo more than once in the White House, made his appearance, as did Felix Tshisekedi, the president of Congo, Mutombo’s home country.

They all said the same thing in different ways. Mutombo has touched lives in one way or another.

“Dikembe Mutombo was an incredible basketball player – one of the best shot blockers and defensive players of all time,” Obama wrote on social media on Monday. “But he also inspired a generation of young people across Africa, and his work as the first NBA player. Global Ambassador has changed the way athletes think about their impact off the field.”

When Mutombo wanted something done, it got done. He built a hospital in Congo and that facility – named after his mother – has now treated about 200,000 people. He worked tirelessly on behalf of the Special Olympics, on behalf of UNICEF, on behalf of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He traveled the world, he encouraged NBA leaders to visit Africa, he fought for change. He was the first, and remains the only, person to win the NBA’s J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award twice.

“His legacy of things he did off the field will long outlive the things he did on the field,” one of his former coaches, fellow Hall of Famer Dan Issel, said Monday.

Issel coached Mutombo in Denver, where they were part of the first 8-seed-beats-1-seed upset in NBA playoff history, the one in which the Nuggets ousted Seattle in a best-of-5 match in 1994 series and Mutombo ended up on the floor when it was over, flat on his back, holding the ball above his head with absolute joy on his face.

That was an iconic moment. But Mutombo’s iconic move was the finger wag, which he broke out after blocking a shot, his index finger going back and forth as if to say “no, no, no” to shooters he had just rejected. It’s legendary. It didn’t start that way.

“He was called in for a technical examination, I think, the first time he did it,” Issel said. “And so the NBA made a rule that they liked it so much, they just didn’t want him to do it in anyone’s face. So after that they said, ‘Hey, if you turn to the crowd and wiggle your fingers, everything will be fine. Just don’t do it to the face of the player you just blocked.”

Mutombo spent 18 seasons in the NBA, playing for Denver, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and the then-New Jersey Nets. The seven-foot center from Georgetown was an eight-time All-Star, four-time Defensive Player of the Year, three-time All-NBA selection and entered the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015 after averaging 9.8 points and 10.3 points. . rebounds per game for his career.

His speech in Springfield, Massachusetts on the evening of his induction lasted approximately 9 minutes. And he probably spent 8 1/2 of those minutes talking about everyone else, instead of his own achievements. He had John Thompson, his Georgetown coach, and then-former NBA commissioner David Stern on stage with him as his Hall of Fame presenters. From Thompson he learned basketball and how to look at the world. Stern gave him the opportunity to use the NBA platform to help change the world. He couldn’t have thanked either of them enough.

“The spirit of Dikembe Mutombo will never be forgotten,” said Philadelphia guard Kyle Lowry, who was a teammate of Mutombo in the center’s final NBA season – with Houston in 2008-09. “I think anyone who’s ever been there, ever been a part of, whoever met him, knows how great of a man he was. He has a great family, great kids. It’s a great loss for our league, our world.

There will be no more finger movements. That voice – it was compared to the Cookie Monster, and Mutombo always saw the humor in that – has been silenced. Mutombo is gone. The legacy is not. That will never be the case.

And if anyone had to sum up Mutombo’s remarkable life in one sentence, there may be no better choice than the one he himself used to conclude his Hall of Fame speech.

“I may not have won the championship,” he said that night, “but I am a champion to so many people.”

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AP sportswriters Pat Graham and Dan Gelston contributed.

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