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Rest in peace, Mount Mutombo.

Good morning.

Programming note: due to Monday’s news, we’ll do the newsletter Tuesday instead of Wednesday. In the next couple of weeks we should be back to five-ish days a week.

Let’s basketball.

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Dikembe Mutombo, the greatest shotblocker in NBA history and a legendary humanitarian, died this week at age 58 after a battle with brain cancer.

The Finger Wag is one of the most iconic celebrations in sports, one that has inspired two generations of mimics in the league alone, not to mention all the blacktop and household copycats. (It’s a Millenial Dad rite of passage to replicate the hilarious Mutombo Geico ad.)

But the Finger Wag was always earned. Dikembe didn’t start playing basketball until his teenage years, and didn’t start at Georgetown until he was 21. He was a 25-year-old NBA rookie. And yet he still blossomed into a four-time Defensive Player of the Year, 10-time All-Star, six-time All-Defense team, three-time All-NBA Hall of Famer.

Two of the most underrated parts of Mutombo’s NBA career: the fact that he played until age 42 (the sixth oldest player ever to appear in a game) and the fact that the No. 8 Nuggets didn’t just beat the No. 1 Sonics in 1994 … but they did it after being down 0-2 in the best-of-five series.

Still the greatest upset in NBA history.

Dikembe was beloved, even by rivals. This clip of him arguing with Michael Jordan backstage at an All-Star Game is great. Dikembe is insisting that MJ has never dunked on him. MJ disagrees. Mutombo is trying to call Scottie Pippen into the room to back him up; Patrick Ewing seems skeptical. In any case, Mutombo says it’ll never happen.

And MJ took that personally.

Dikembe was a great sport. He talked about that dunk after he retired (people kept bringing it up when he was on T.V. talking about his amazing humanitarian work). He was also a great sport when Dan Le Batard and Bomani Jones asked the question that every blog era internet participant wanted to hear: was the story of Dikembe walking into a club as a Georgetown Hoya and asking “Who wants to sex Mutombo?” true?

He didn’t take himself too seriously — doing the finger wag in response to an embarrassing story is just perfect. Even if Alonzo Mourning later sold him out on the same show.

But above all — great defense, great personality, great sense of humor — he was a great humanitarian. He raised money for global polio vaccination. He raised money for various causes in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo. He built a hospital and research center in Kinshasa. He built a school. He was a major ambassador for Basketball Without Borders, and a mentor to a wide range of African immigrants in the NBA.

Masai Ujiri, the Raptors’ top basketball executive, came back to the podium at Toronto’s Media Day after completing his initial press conference once the news about Mutombo broke.

“That guy — he made us who we are. That guy is a giant.”

Heavens bless this man and his family. Rest in peace, Dikembe.

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John Konchar Is A Fan

Here’s an absolutely hilarious story from Grizzlies media day. Take it away, John Konchar.