NBA legend Dikembe Mutombo spoke at his jersey retirement with the Nuggets, shared how costly his finger wag truly was
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In sports, each player has a different way of celebrating their moment and letting off steam. There has been no shortage of epic celebrations in the NBA. In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of different celebrations. Starting from the 2022 Playoffs, we have Stephen Curry’s night-night. There is Michael Jordan’s iconic shrug after his shot over the Blazers in 1992.
However, as far as you can look, no celebration has had the impact as Dikembe Mutombo did with his iconic finger-wag. Anyone who watched the NBA in the 90s was always impressed watching the 7’1 big man defending the rim with everything he had.
Getting past Dikembe Mutombo was no simple task, something even Michael Jordan had an idea of. As much as fans loved/hated seeing that finger-wag, it turns out the NBA wasn’t a big fan of the same. David Stern personally let Dikembe know about the same.
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Dikembe Mutombo lost thousands of dollars over his finger wag
In 2016, Dikembe Mutombo became the fifth Nuggets player to have their jersey retired. After his jersey retirement, Mutombo was asked about his iconic finger wag. Talking about the same, he said,
“I lose thousands and thousands of dollars. I was fined $10,000, $5,000, $2,000 for waving my finger. It’s funny to laugh about it today. But back then, it was a lot of money.”
This wasn’t the only time the big man has spoken about it. During his interview with Graham Bensinger, Dikembe talked about how he lost a lot of money over the wag.
While the same might have been involuntary for the Congolese big man, many in and around the league found the same very disrespectful. Dikembe also narrated how the NBA office used to call him up after every game, asking him to stop the action.
Also Read: Michael Jordan, who owns a $61M Air Jordan 3 themed jet, has an insane $8M yacht on the same theme
Something which helped Dikembe earn millions of dollars, also ended up costing him thousands as well.
