For Cory Slater it was love at first sight. As Dikembe Mutombo put his left hand on Shawn Kemp’s hip and his right hand on history to block his eighth Seattle shot in the Nuggets’ iconic Game 5 victory over the top-seeded SuperSonics, a boy from New Jersey knew he had found his team and his player. His moment and his muse.

“I’m only 12 years old and I just started exercising,” Slater, now 42, said by phone Monday evening. “I didn’t know how important it was that the Nuggets did that. I didn’t know what that meant. But to see that, how everyone just went crazy – I’ve been a Nuggets fan ever since.

“In the nineties everyone had ‘his’ man. He was ‘our’ man. He turned me into a Nuggets fan. He made me not only a Nuggets fan, but a sports fan.”

Before Nikola Jokic, there was Mount Mutombo. No. 55, who died Monday at age 58 after a battle with brain cancer, brought the world to the Nuggets. And the Nuggets for the world.

“He was always global-minded,” recalls former Denver teammate LaPhonso Ellis, one of the stalwarts of the early ’90s, including the ’93-94 squad under coach Dan Issel that produced the first No. 8 seed in the NBA Playoffs ever. to upset a No. 1.

“And a lot of this may be where he came from (the Democratic Republic of Congo), but the reality is that many people didn’t know that he raised two of his nieces and nephews before he ever raised his own children. . Some of that was cultural. But to be able to handle that level of responsibility, and to give yourself up to take on that level of responsibility, says a lot about his character and who he was as a person.

As for the “who,” Deke’s Instagram profile probably said it best: The son of Congo, DRC. CEO, NBA Global Ambassador, humanitarian, businessman, father, and now…Hall-of-Famer.

Mutombo, who was drafted by the Nuggets in 1991 out of John Thompson’s Georgetown dynasty and spent the first five seasons of a storied 18-year NBA career in Denver, forever seemed bigger than the game. Although he excelled there too: Mutombo, Rudy Gobert and Ben Wallace are the only players to ever be named NBA Defensive Player of the Year four times.

He was the rarest of legends, the kind we can close our eyes and conjure from sounds alone. The think when his palm hit a basketball and a shot hit five rows back. That smile. The one that came from deep in the belly, deep in the soul, a thunderclap of pure joy.

Whether it was through the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation or the wave of a finger, Deke gave better than he got. In an era of Jordan, Barkley and Hakeem, epic scorers, Mutombo made defense cool. When we think of epic blocked shots, his hands are the ones we go to. He was the finger that had the last laugh.

His joy was contagious. His reach was enormous. He was fierce on the field, but polite and considerate off it. His interests and his circles varied: Deke spoke nine languages ​​and also starred – as himself – in the bawdy cartoon comedy “Family Guy,” while counting both the late Sen. John McCain and fellow Hoya great Patrick Ewing as friends.

“I never saw Bill Russell play,” Issel told me Monday. “But I think Dikembe, in my opinion, is the best defensive player to ever play in the NBA.

“But I think because of his big personality and his booming voice and all that, I think a lot of people remember his career after (playing), when he became (ambassador for) the NBA, because of how much good he did around the world , but especially in Congo, his home country, that could overshadow what a great player he was.”

To most under 30, he’s the guy from the Geico commercials, wagging and cracking his fingers. But for fans like Slater, he was an inspiration. The latter grew up in New Brunswick, NJ, about 30 miles from Trenton. Nets/Knicks area. He cast his lot with the Nuggets in the 1990s. That would be a bit like a sixth grader growing up an hour away from the Dodgers these days and still favoring the Rockies.

“Dikembe’s career has impressed me. And the fact that he was so internationally known and how (seriously) he took his love for people,” Slater continued. “I remember when they finally won the championship (in 2023). I started crying.”

He came for Mutombo. He stayed ahead of Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Slater was born with cerebral palsy. His father took him to Knicks games, but what he remembers was the New York fans teasing him. He also remembers watching Abdul-Rauf’s process at the free-throw line at the same time and thinking anything was possible.