Dikembe Mutombo, the Hall of Fame basketball player, passed away on September 30 at the age of 58, writes Liz Roscher for Yahoo! Sports. Mutombo succumbed to brain cancer, a condition he was diagnosed with in October 2022.

"I was playing with a goal in mind, and what I wanted to accomplish before I would leave the game. Being able to accomplish that, I was so proud of my success. Every time I came to the court, I studied the statistics.

In the pantheon of NBA greats, few figures loom as large—both literally and figuratively—as Dikembe Mutombo. Standing at a towering 7'2", the man from

Jeff Van Gundy, Bernie Bickerstaff and Mutombo's teammates on the legacy of the beloved player: "There was no way you could not like him."

NBA legend Dikembe Mutombo, who has died at age 58, played up his habit of wagging his finger at opponents in a funny commercial for Geico.

But when Mutombo died of brain cancer on Monday at 58, most who knew him or knew of him paid primary tribute to his humanitarian work, particularly in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo, and his efforts to promote the sport across the globe. He was a towering man of towering achievements.

In simplest terms, that is the legacy of Mutombo, the 7-foot-2 mountain of a center who died Monday, about two years after his family revealed that he was dealing with brain cance

He was a defensive force on the court who changed the way the game of basketball is played. But more importantly, Dikembe truly changed the world and improved countless lives through his humanitarian work in Africa.