Boucher’s big night leaves questions
Raptors would trade the big man’s historic effort for something consistent
Chris Boucher played a game that was better statistically than any ever before by a Raptors big man.
Better by numbers than anything Chris Bosh ever did, or Pascal Siakam, or Antonio Davis, or Jonas Valanciunas, or any of the many other frontcourt players — good and bad — in the first 2,044 games of the franchise’s existence.
It was a wonderful night: 38 points and 19 rebounds in a loss to the Chicago Bulls on Thursday, one rebound shy of the first 30-20 game ever by a Raptor and the first time anyone has reached those numbers in the same game.
There have been better scoring nights — the list of 40-plus games runs the gamut from Acie Earl to Andrea Bargnani to Bosh, who did it nine times.
And there have been better rebounding nights up front — Bismack
Biyombo once had 25; Bosh went over 20 twice, as did Valanciunas; Donyell Marshall had 24; Joey Dorsey once grabbed 20.
But never before had anyone put up 38 and 19, and for that Boucher should praised and held in high regard.
“He had a night, that’s for sure,” coach Nick Nurse said.
Now, no one expects such numbers on a regular basis. That’s not the point, and it’s unwise to suggest Boucher will ever put together that kind of game again. It’s what made Thursday historic, but in some ways also what made the previous two months so disappointing.
Only twice in a 26-game stretch before Thursday had Boucher reached double figures in rebounds, and his previous 10 scoring totals were all over the map: two, four, seven, five, 18, four, 10, 10, eight, 19.
None of those were close to 38-19 — an outlier of a game, not soon to be repeated — and it’s not the kind of consistent play the team needs. Even six or seven double-figure rebounding
games in that period, or five or six big scoring nights, would have gone a long, long way to help salvage what’s turning into the team’s worst season in almost a decade.
If there is one thing Nurse has always wanted from everyone on the roster, it’s consistency. The coach realizes, rightly, that no one can be brilliant every game. His desire is for guys who turn in one excellent game every five to build their skills and confidence to where they can do it three nights out of five, or four. That’s how improvement manifests itself and truly helps the team.
Boucher, for all his excellence, hasn’t done that. He’s been great and he’s been invisible, and he hasn’t been the former often enough.
All the things he said after Thursday’s game hit home, and were fine examples of selfawareness.
“I feel like ... the last couple of games I’ve been staying on the three-point line a little too much, just expecting the ball to come back and to shoot it. And obviously shooting the ball is helpful, but my bread and butter was offensive rebounding,” he said. “I used to get two, three a game every time. So it’s just about going back to film and watching what I used to do that made me successful, and crash the boards as much as I can. I think I’m a really good offensive rebounder and that could give us two, three extra possessions, and so I’ve got to go back to that.”
On the out-of-nowhere ball handling and attacking that helped him pile up the points: “I think it was a great game to showcase a little bit of that because they know I’m popping and I can shoot the ball, so now they’re closing out a little bit better,” he said. “I get to showcase a little bit of a read after the pick-and-pop.”
None of that is new. The Raptors have been hammered on the boards far more often than not all season, and the need for Boucher to expand his offensive repertoire has been evident since Christmas.
Doing it 51 games into the season was tremendous; not doing it often enough in the first twothirds of the season was troubling.
Fans should absolutely be excited about Boucher’s big game. But they should also question why there have been so many nights so far off that, when the season could have been salvaged.
There are myriad other complications and circumstances that have sent this season careening off a cliff, and they are all legitimate. To those must be added the up-and-down contributions of the only Raptor to have appeared in every game this season.