From dish rags to an NBA court
A true Horatio Alger tale — Raptors’ Boucher found basketball as his way out of a tough life
TORONTO — Chris Boucher returns to Montreal today as a Toronto Raptors hopeful.
But he represents much more than that to a legion of kids who can learn perseverance, belief in oneself and the benefits of pure hard work from the 25-year-old Boucher.
He grew up tough and underprivileged, a high school dropout at 16 years old, aimless and unmotivated and taking to the city’s buses to grab sleep some nights.
He worked as a dishwasher and a cook or he didn’t work at all.
But he found inspiration in basketball, his prodigious talent buried in a frame that is now a lithe six-foot-10, and skills and a work ethic that have him on the precipice of earning at least a two-way contract with the Raptors.
The kids who get a chance to take in the Raptors’ visit to play the Brooklyn Nets at the Bell Centre on Wednesday night would do well to draw inspiration from the local among them.
“I feel like I can show a lot of people, a lot of kids, that it’s possible to make it,” Boucher said after the Raptors worked out in Toronto on Tuesday. “A lot of people have been following me and just didn’t have the chance to see me play a lot, so I think that’s the one good thing about this trip is that they’ll be able to see an NBA game and be able to see me, too.
“A lot of young kids want to make it, you know, and (it helps) seeing a guy that’s actually playing and can give them hope and inspiration to make it.”
That Boucher is at this point in his life truly is a tremendous story. He fought through a difficult childhood — he didn’t even play basketball before his teenage years — and bounced around a couple of junior colleges before landing at the University of Oregon.
He blossomed there but blew out an ACL in his last college game, went undrafted despite his raw talent, spent last season on a two-way deal with the Golden State Warriors and the Santa Cruz Warriors of the G League. Cut adrift, he latched on with the Raptors at the Las Vegas Summer League and has impressed coach Nick Nurse enough to be in the running for one of the two-way spots the Raptors have. One has gone to Jordan Loyd but the second is for Boucher or Eric Moreland to grab, Nurse has hinted.
“He was kind of late coming to Summer League practice and stuff because some of that national team stuff, and then we didn’t really discover him, I didn’t discover him really, until about Game 3,” Nurse said.
“I moved him to the five-spot and he was much more comfortable, he was blocking shots, and all of a sudden we thought we had an interesting prospect there.”
In a fight for a job? Don’t bet against Boucher.
“He surprises people every day,” Toronto’s C.J. Miles said Tuesday. “The first couple of days obviously I noticed he’s mobile for his size, he runs the floor, he blocks shots … and then he starts making threes. He has a chip on his shoulder and he plays hard. That’s the biggest thing. He competes. You can see it in his face and in his demeanour when he turns the switch on. But he has been great.”
Boucher figures there will be at least 100 friends and family in the Bell Centre audience Wednesday — “that’s without the people who’ve bought their own tickets,” he said — and reconnecting with them will be among the best parts of the trip.
“It’s truly a blessing to play in front of my family and friends, definitely going to enjoy the experience,” the Saint Lucia-born Boucher said. “It’ll feel good to play in front of them.”
And it’ll feel good for them to see him.