On possibly his last season as a Toronto Raptor, the Montreal native Chris Boucher was nominated for the NBA Social Justice Champion award. A relatively new accolade, the honour was introduced five years ago, which commemorates NBA Hall of Famer Kareem-Abdul Jabbar and recognizes an NBA player who values social justice.
The other four nominees are Bam Adebayo (Miami), Harrison Barnes (San Antonio), Jrue Holiday (Boston) and CJ McCollum (New Orleans).
Boucher has been nominated for his off-court work, mainly with his SlimmDuck Foundation, which was founded by Boucher himself in October 2022. He’s provided youth in Toronto and Montreal with scholarships (announced in April 2023 at the Toronto Metropolitan University), mental health support, and has been a huge part of both communities.
His character has been tested twice in the last two seasons with on-court struggles as he would often be a part of the Raptors rotation only to get dropped into oblivion, not to be seen on the court for months, even if he was performing, but he would never once complain.
Even before his stardom in the NBA, Boucher had been through struggles of his own, as he’s lived through homelessness. He’s doing everything in his power to make sure that he can help out as many others as he can to make sure they don’t experience the same fate.
More specifically, Boucher has hosted basketball camps for youth across three cities, hosted a mental health panel, and donated 15+ computer equipment to Hackergals (an organization that supports girls to be more prominent in the tech field).
The winner of the award gets $100,000 to donate to an organization of their choice, and it’s clear that if Chris Boucher’s time is over as a Raptor, they won’t be missing just his game but also be losing a huge contributor to the Canadian community.
