Portland Trail Blazers: 30 greatest players in franchise history
By Ben Beecken
- Played 7 seasons with Trail Blazers (1978-79, 1981-86)
- Averaged 16.7 points, 8.9 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game
Kids these days may best know Mychal Thompson as the father of Klay Thompson. But that’s the No. 15 player in Trail Blazers history they’re talking about!
Thompson was the first-overall pick of the 1978 NBA Draft by the Trail Blazers (they had acquired the pick in a trade and were lucky enough to pick first after a 57-win season the year before) out of the University of Minnesota. The 6-foot-10 big man averaged 14.7 points, 8.3 rebounds, and a whopping 1.8 blocks per game as a rookie.
After missing the entire 1979-80 season due to injury, Thompson came back with a vengeance in the fall of 1980. He averaged 17 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 2.2 blocks per game that season, followed by 20.8 points and 11.7 rebounds per game the following year.
Of course, the Trail Blazers didn’t have much around him and consistently won between 42 and 48 games in the regular season, only to be bounced early in the playoffs. In fact, over the course of seven seasons in Portland, Thompson only managed to play minutes in the second round of the playoffs twice, and never further than that.
After a dominant stretch in Portland — that, somewhat surprisingly, never led to an All-Star appearance — Thompson played 49 games with the San Antonio Spurs before finishing his career with four-plus seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Thompson was ultra-consistent, and one of the better players of the 1980s to never be named to an All-Star team. However, his son Klay has already been to four All-Star Games as a member of the Golden State Warriors and is still only 28 years old…