It's good to see an old shipmate inducted into a hall of fame. Dikembe Mutombo and I sailed together twice, to Robben Island and back. Not a voyage of Joseph Conrad dimensions, you'll agree, but memorable.For the basketball great it was an opportunity to visit Nelson Mandela's place of incarceration a few years after the great man's release; for me, the chance to interview a famously elusive subject.I had pursued Mutombo from the moment he arrived with a group of NBA stars in Cape Town. It was rumoured that he fled his native Democratic Republic of Congo because dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then still in power, was holding his family hostage. If true, it would make a great story.Right from the start, Mutombo was wise to me. At first he declined to speak, but held out the prospect of an interview later in the day.I shadowed him from his hotel to a school in Khayelitsha, to Table Bay harbour, to Robben Island and back.Along the way Mutombo became more evasive and I began to wonder if he feared for the safety of his family.It wasn't that which put me off, but the effect of the rocking motion of our transport.To elude me, Mutombo climbed the rigging of the narrow-hulled boat bringing us back from the island.The further the 2.18m NBA star climbed, the more determinedlyI followed, until we were perched so high there was nowhere else to climb.I looked up at Mutombo with still a foot and a bit to go, then to the deck swaying far below. That is when the nausea set in and when Mutombo knew he had won. By the time we reached shore, I was ready to hurl, and when I recovered, the NBA stars were long gone.But I still had a story to justify a day away from the office on the high seas.That school visit had caused consternation. When about six black guys, all seven-foot-plus except for a short white guy from the Utah Jazz, emerged from the bus, the kids went berserk. It must have been like Jack and the Beanstalk come to life, except that these giants were benign.Once the kids, bright-eyed and in awe of their guests, had been shoehorned into a small hall, the NBA stars began to engage them."So, son," NBA great Patrick Ewing asked a little boy seated near the front on the floor, "do you know who we are?"The boy just shook his head, but continued to smile admiringly."Well," Ewing continued, not put out at all. "Who's your hero?"Without blinking, the boy found his voice: "Jonty Rhodes."The conversations went downhill from there. America and ourselves had never seemed so far apart.On September 11 Mutombo will be inducted into the National Basketball Association's Hall of Fame. It is a deserving accolade for one of the best defensive players of the game and someone who has become one of sport's great philanthropists.After Mobuto was deposed in 1997, Mutombo began building a hospital in his home town, Kinshasa, in honour of his mother who had died after a stroke. It was opened 10 years later at the cost of $29-million. Mutombo had put up $15-million of his own money...