The 5 greatest NBA trade deadline deals ever
By Adam McGee
5. Dikembe Mutombo, Roshown McLeod to the 76ers; Theo Ratliff, Toni Kukoc, Nazr Mohammed, Pepe Sanchez to the Hawks
Sitting at the top of the Eastern Conference standings led by a prime Allen Iverson who would go on to be named MVP at the end of the season, the Philadelphia 76ers were left with big decisions to make at the 2001 NBA trade deadline.
The Sixers were already thriving with Theo Ratliff manning the middle, but the sustainability of that plan was easy to question. In the middle of the best season of an otherwise mediocre career, Ratliff was named an All-Star reserve before breaking his right wrist in early February and being scheduled to miss four-to-six weeks.
This left Philadelphia in need of consolidating their center spot in order to avoid wasting a year that offered real potential of the franchise’s first championship since 1983. The move they made was to pick up another Eastern center who had made the All-Star team alongside Ratliff. At that time a seven-time All-Star and three-time Defensive Player of the Year, Dikembe Mutombo was a perfect fit.
After watching Iverson and Mutombo star together while coaching the Eastern Conference in that same All-Star game, Philadelphia’s Larry Brown began to imagine what it would look like to have the two play together on a more regular basis.
Trading nothing of real value outside of an injured Ratliff and a post-prime Toni Kukoc, Philadelphia added one of the league’s most dominant centers. Although the fit wasn’t seamless to begin with — the Sixers even rolled off a five-game losing streak in March — it wouldn’t take too long before everything clicked into place.
Mutombo finished the regular season as Defensive Player of the Year and the NBA’s rebounding leader, with Philadelphia clinching the top seed in the East. Although the 76ers would fall short against the Lakers in the Finals, they were certainly bolstered by Mutombo’s presence.
The Congolese big man would have one more All-Star season in Philadelphia, and to this day can still boast that he was a central piece of the franchise’s only team to emerge from the East in the last 30 years.