In the Raptors press room, where the journalists & camerapersons engage coaches and players, I typically sit at the back of the room, right next to my pal, Amit Mann. Wonderful guy, and you may know his work with Yahoo Sports. This proximity made me think that Chris Boucher was pointing at me from the hallway with a massive grin on his face before yelling out something that I couldn’t understand.
Amit was kind enough to explain to me that he and Boucher had recently discussed his highlights among other things. Boucher’s podcast being under the umbrella of Yahoo Sports, he and Amit are brothers in content. All of this was reaffirmed, emphatically, by Boucher swinging by once again, this time much closer, and yelling at Amit: “I GOT YOU, MAN”.
Boucher’s incredible, unbelievable, near-free-throw-line dunk is perhaps the best of his career. It would be the best of most players in the NBA. He took off from too far. So far, that the facsimiles of his dunks, the comparisons, would be found in the NBA dunk contest. Julius Erving, an all-time great, on his 3rd attempt in 1984, took off and made a dunk, roughly 6 inches farther from the basket than Boucher did in a game. A 4-on-1 against Jose Alvarado, who stunted toward a spot that Boucher would fly over. The arena went berserk. Matt Devlin screamed into the microphone: “HE TOOK OFF IN MONTREAL! HE LANDED IN TORONTO!” A great call, for a great dunk. Certain to provide fans with the full Boucher experience, he blocked a Naji Marshall 3-point attempt as time expired.
“That was pretty cool. … That’s Chris, right? He’s going to make some spectacular plays. He’s going to do ‘em at both ends. He makes something happen.” Nurse said of Boucher’s fantastic sequence. Asked afterwards about Boucher maybe jumping too early, he added: “Nope. He always dunks those. I’ve seen that many times in practice.”
Coming up the floor, Boucher took three dribbles to cover the whole court. Two throw ahead dribbles, then one to get him into his gather, then pandemonium. Absolute chaos. I was almost surprised that the dunk wasn’t preceded by Boucher spraying his face with chrome and screaming “WITNESS ME!” to the crowd.
The NBA, where amazing happens or something like that. And the really fun part? This isn’t even that rare for Boucher lately. The NBA does a really great job with player of the week (of their respective conference) and player of the month, in cataloging the great stretches of a players career. There’s a reason when Pascal Siakam wins one of those, we get updated on how many Raptors have done it, and how many times. It’s special.
“Chris Boucher, that was crazy. He almost took off from the free throw line.”
– Scottie Barnes
I’d like to catalog for Boucher, the fact that he’s probably been the NBA’s most entertaining in-game dunker over the last couple weeks of basketball. The aforementioned skyscraping dunk, of course. But, what about 3 games ago when he dunked Kelly Olynyk into the crust of the earth. Stylistically, it was close to Terrence Ross’ immaculate dunk on Kenneth Faried. The contest went across the body, but both Boucher and Ross reached back to nowhere, before bringing it all forward. Only, Boucher did it with two hands. The bench erupted, his teammates surfed onto the court during a timeout, and behind all that was Scottie Barnes, awestruck, and covering his mouth. The camera panned to Boucher and Precious Achiuwa who chest bumped. Oddly enough, the camera started shaking uncontrollably right after. RAMSHACKLE!
The gargantuan euro-step, and-one dunk around Bogdanovic and into the bucket. Devlin’s “and the foul!” call backtracked by Armstrong screaming “BONJOURRRRRRR” while his eyes roll back into his head. The not-so-intentional behind-the-back drop-off pass from Siakam that found a screaming Boucher before he jumped into the rim. The man has made a runway of everything in front of him.
Everyone who watches basketball clings onto moments that inform how they view the game. You can’t remember every play. Some people are more inclined to remember certain plays, that evoke certain schools of thought, but everyone will remember what Boucher has been doing lately.
Thanks for these, Chris.
Have a blessed day.
