Dikembe Mutombo is Here to Remind you Turn Off the Lights When You're Not Using Them

By: Nina Mandell | USA Today

https://youtu.be/BrI85XFly6Q

In the midst of the NBA playoffs, Dikembe Mutombo has a simple message: Go green. The former star turned NBA ambassador is portrayed — along with Jason Collins, Felipe Lopez, and WNBA Legends Swin Cash and Ruth Riley — as an animated bobblehead as part of the NBA Green Energy All-Stars campaign in honor of Earth Day.

“It is very important to protect our environment and the NBA has been in the center of so many causes so this one is a great one,” he said. Mutombo said he thought the bobblehead rendering brought back some fond memories of his early days in the league.

“When I came to the NBA in 1991 I remember when the league and the Denver Nuggets came out with a Dikembe Mutombo bobblehead. It was amazing. It was something that fans took a hold of,” he said. “So I think it’s going to have an impact to the way our fans are getting the message. I think the message will go directly to their minds.”

So what does Mutombo do everyday to help the environment? Turning off the lights of course, using a timer to turn off lights around the house, switching the washing machine to cold wash instead of hot wash and turning off appliances when they’re not in use.

“When we’re not charging our phone everything (that it’s charged with) doesn’t have to be on,” he said. Since we had Mutombo on the phone, we had to (jokingly) ask him: With the NBA draft lottery coming up, will there be any more tweets leading up to the big day that will spur the internet into a wave of conspiracy theories like last year’s?

He laughed. “No! I’m not going to make that mistake that I did last year,” he said. “… Definitely I’m going to make sure that I keep my mouth shut and stay away from my phone, from Twitter, from my Instagram.”