The greater loss

 The passing of icons tend to elbow one another aside when they come as fast they have the last few days. We barely handed Dame Maggie Smith her flowers before Kris Kristofferson died, and then the remembrance train chugged on to the next stop when word came that Pete Rose was gone.

So Tuesday was all about Charlie Hustle the player and Charlie Hustle the hustler, all about a deeply flawed human whose brilliance on the field was matched by his utter lack of moral rectitude off it. He blithely ignored the cardinal rule of his game and paid the price for it, and in the end he alone was to blame.

But who was to blame for the passing that his death crowded so swiftly off the stage, other than unjust timing?

Because the day before Rose was found dead, the world of games was mourning the death of another icon. His name was Dikembe Mutombo, and in every way that matters it is the greater loss. As much as Rose's legacy was darkened by his own impulses, after all, Mutombo's was illuminated by his.

Today, then, let's acknowledge a 7-foot-3 NBA center from the Congo who turned the air and space around the rim into private fiefdom, not to violated by anyone foolish enough to try. You drove the basketball into Mutombo's house, the basketball more often than not went back the other way, with postage due. The resoundingly blocked shot was his signature, and he scribbled it often.

But that was only basketball. Outside of it, Mutombo was a man who spoke nine languages, including five African tongues, and whose work to better life for the people of both his native land and the continent as a whole came to define him more than anything he did on a basketball floor.

If the measure of any man or woman's life is how fervently he or she tried to make the world a better place, then Mutombo's life was rich indeed. And he was rewarded for it by the almost universal respect the world returned to him.

It's a world thick with irony these days, and not just because so many public figures are deaf to it. In Mutombo's case, his passing came during a presidential election in which one ticket is trafficking on the most loathsome sort of racist fear-mongering, scaring the rubes with wild tales of brown-and-black-skinned savages coming to America to eat their pets and rape their daughters and take over wholesome American suburbs with their drug cartels.

It's an old playbook based on the usual tissue of ancient urban legends and blatant lies, and it's relevant to Mutombo because among the urban legends and lies being shamelessly advanced is that some of the savages coming to destroy America are from the Congo.

The irony, of course, is that while this is happening, we pause to remember a Congolese who was in every way a better man than those slurring his people. And whose example makes any thinking person wonder who, in fact, are the real savages here.

As if there's any question.