{"id":58903,"date":"2025-02-16T12:18:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T10:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/more-sport\/national-basketball-association-nba-africa-creates-annual-dikembe-mutombo-humanitarian-award\/"},"modified":"2025-02-16T12:18:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T10:18:04","slug":"national-basketball-association-nba-africa-creates-annual-dikembe-mutombo-humanitarian-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/more-sport\/national-basketball-association-nba-africa-creates-annual-dikembe-mutombo-humanitarian-award\/","title":{"rendered":"National Basketball Association (NBA) Africa Creates Annual Dikembe Mutombo Humanitarian Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"press-body-in\">\n                            <span><br \/>\n                                                            SAN FRANCISCO, United States of America, February 16, 2025\/APO Group\/ &#8212;<br \/>\n                                                        <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>New Award Will be Given Out Annually to Individuals and Organizations Making Exceptional Contributions to Humanitarian Efforts\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><em>NBA Africa\u00a0Will Donate 55 Basketball Courts to Communities on the Continent\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>in Honor of Mutombo and His Iconic Jersey Number\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>NBA Commissioner Adam Silver today announced the creation of the NBA Africa (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/apo-opa.co\/3X62Q9Z\" rel=\"noopener\">www.NBA.com<\/a>) Dikembe Mutombo Humanitarian Award, a new annual honor that will recognize a person or an organization that works to advance health, education or economic opportunity across the continent of Africa.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The award is named after the late four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer who served as the NBA\u2019s first global ambassador following his retirement from the league in 2009.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Silver also announced that NBA Africa will donate 55 courts to local communities on the continent in honor of Mutombo and his iconic jersey number, beginning in his native Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo where he first discovered his love for the game.\u00a0 The courts will feature a distinct design inspired by Mutombo and contribute to NBA Africa\u2019s commitment of building 1,000 courts on the continent over the next decade.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement was made at the 10<sup>th<\/sup> annual NBA Africa All-Star Luncheon in San Francisco, Calif. as part of NBA All-Star 2025.\u00a0The award will be presented annually beginning at next year\u2019s luncheon, with the recipient receiving a financial grant to further their humanitarian efforts and a donation from NBA Africa to a charity of their choice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDikembe devoted his life to helping others and brought joy to so many people across Africa and around the world,\u201d said Silver.\u00a0\u201cThis new award and the basketball courts built in his name will honor Dikembe\u2019s extraordinary legacy as a global humanitarian.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Selected fourth overall in the 1991 NBA Draft, Mutombo spent 18 years in the NBA during which time he was an eight-time NBA All-Star and four-time Defensive Player of the Year, leading the league in blocked shots three times and becoming the second-leading shot blocker in NBA history.\u00a0 He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Recognized for his philanthropic and humanitarian work, Mutombo was a recipient of many awards, including the Congressional Humanitarian Award (2013), John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health\u2019s Goodermote Humanitarian Award (2011), Laureus World Sports Award (2010), John Thompson Jr. Legacy of a Dream Award (2010) and the U.S. President\u2019s Service Award (2000).\u00a0 A general hospital he built in Kinshasa and named in memory of his late mother, the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, opened its doors to the public in 2007.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nba.africa-newsroom.com\/press\/national-basketball-association-nba-africa-creates-annual-dikembe-mutombo-humanitarian-award?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SAN FRANCISCO, United States of America, February 16, 2025\/APO Group\/ &#8212; New Award Will be Given Out Annually to Individuals and Organizations Making Exceptional Contributions to Humanitarian Efforts\u00a0 NBA Africa\u00a0Will Donate 55 Basketball Courts to Communities on the Continent\u00a0in Honor of Mutombo and His Iconic Jersey Number\u00a0 NBA Commissioner Adam Silver today announced the creation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58904,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nba.africa-newsroom.com\/files\/large\/fd3fc068ecef601","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-more-sport"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nba.africa-newsroom.com\/files\/large\/fd3fc068ecef601","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}