Portland Trail Blazers: 30 greatest players in franchise history
By Ben Beecken
- Played five seasons with Trail Blazers (1980-84)
- Averaged 17.2 points and 6.9 rebounds per game
Calvin Natt played a large role on a series of Trail Blazers squads that had solid regular seasons, but scuffled in the playoffs. (Stop me if you’ve heard that one before, Blazers fans.)
Natt was a 6-foot-6 small forward drafted eighth-overall by the then New Jersey Nets in 1980. However, he only played 53 games with the Nets before being shipped to Portland in exchange for Maurice Lucas (more on him later in the countdown).
Natt appeared 25 games as a rookie for Portland and averaged an impressive 20.4 points and 7.1 rebounds for a team that lost in the first round of the playoffs to the then Seattle SuperSonics. The next year, Natt only averaged 13.4 points and 5.8 rebounds per game, but bounced back in 1981-82 to the tune of 17.7 points and 8.2 rebounds per contest.
Only once did a Trail Blazers team with Natt on it advance past the first round. In 1983, they defeated Seattle before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games in the second round. Natt stepped up big, averaging 18.9 points and 9.1 rebounds per game in the seven playoff games that Portland played.
Surprisingly, Natt never made his way on to an All-Star team in his five years in Portland, although he made an All-Star appearance in 1984-85 with the Denver Nuggets, his first year away from the Blazers.
He played two full seasons in Denver before two injury-plagued campaigns. Sadly, Natt didn’t play in more than 27 games in a season over his final four years in the league.