Posted By Lynn Worthy, Sun Staff

Short, sweet, pure and simple. He summed it up in one sentence as he walked away from the media to prepare for Wednesday night’s game against the Celtics.

“I was ready to come to your cold city, but they did not want me,“ Dikembe Mutombo said making reference to the winter weather.

The 7-foot-2 17-year veteran center and four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year came extremely close to becoming a member of the Boston Celtics. How close? He put his thumb and index finger mere centimeters apart to show how close during an interview prior to last night‘s game.

Depth at the center position is one of the areas the Celtics admittedly would like to strengthen. Mutumbo being on the market seemed like a good fit. The two sides couldn’t link up, and he re-signed with the Rockets on Dec. 31. According to the 42-year-old Mutumbo, the reason rests mostly with the Celtics.

“I said okay, I’ve got about seven organizations here that want me, and this organization (the Celtics) I want to go to, I thought they wanted me, but they’re looking at somebody else,” Mutumbo said. “Should I be on the waiting list, or should I just go and take another offer that was on the table?

“I think by having talks day and night with T-Mac (Houston forward Tracy McGrady) -- he kept calling my phone and keep saying ‘come on man, we want you here.’ -- I said I should just go be with guys that are talking to me and want me to be part of their family.”

Mutumbo said he’d heard that Boston had interest in Alonzo Mourning, Joe Smith and PJ Brown and he decided, “Okay,I’m not going to get in the middle of this.”

Conversely, Mutumbo said Houston management and general manager Daryl Morey made a hard push for his services just before Christmas.

“We just couldn‘t pull the trigger as soon as he needed us to pull the trigger,” Celtics head coach Doc Rivers said. “We liked him too. We just wanted to wait and see what was out there, and he wasn’t willing to do that and we understood that.”