Success for Chris Boucher Will All Come Down to Consistency

For all the times Chris Boucher has reinvigorated the Toronto Raptors over the past few seasons with the out-of-nowhere blocked shots he fires into the second row or the three-pointers he can bang in one after another, it's the lows that drive Raptors coach Nick Nurse mad.

For better or for worse, that's been the calling card of Boucher for the better part of the past three seasons. For all the oohs and ahhs he generates, there are as many moments that leave you puzzled. Where was he on that rotation? How come he wasn't boxing out? Why was he so aggressive on that close-out?

“I’d kind of like him to not be so much all or nothing on the defensive end,” Nurse said following Wednesday afternoon’s training camp practice. "He's gonna make these humongous blocks and steals and I'd like them to be all are solid. Let’s just play coverage and getting in there and making the right rotations and block his man out."

If fewer peaks mean fewer valleys this season, it's a trade-off the Raptors will take from their 28-year-old forward who enters his fourth season with the organization. To Nurse, it’s not so much what a player looks like at his best that’s so telling as it is about those nights when things aren’t going as planned. It’s how a player performs when his shots aren’t falling and the box score stats aren’t piling up that Nurse really cares about.

For Boucher, that’s a lesson still being learned. For as much as he’d like to shoot 40% from three-point range this season — a goal he’s set for himself — it’s consistency on both ends of the court he’s really focused on.

“I think that's what dropped my (three-point shooting) number is I got to a point where I was trigger happy again,” said Boucher who shot 46% from behind the arc through the first 33 games of the season before finishing the season shooting 30% from three-point range over the final 27 games. “It's just about making the read now and I'm getting better every year so this year you're gonna see some different again.”

What’s nice about Boucher is he’s such a versatile player on a team loaded with tweeners. At 6-foot-9 with a 7-foot-4 wingspan, he’s long enough to help inside and quick enough to defend the perimeter.

“That's always kind of his advantage,” Nurse said. “Normally that's gonna mean he can drive around those (big) guys or run around them to offensive rebound, or pull ‘em away to shoot. He does have some advantages of playing against the bigs for sure.”

Making the most of that speed with some on-ball creation is the next big hurdle for Boucher on the offensive end. The overwhelming majority of his points last season came without a dribble (82%, per NBA Stats), either on pick-and-pop three-pointers or buckets at the rim.

This season, especially early on with Pascal Siakam out, the Raptors are going to be asking for a little more offensive creation from players who haven’t necessarily shown that in the past. So while Boucher hasn’t historically been a one-on-one offensive creator (he averaged just one drive per game last season), the Raptors are going to need a little more from him this season.

“We're working on some of that stuff,” Nurse said. “Like when he does blast down the lane by his matchup, well a lot of times there's other help coming, can he make those reads? He is a pretty good kick-out passer, he'll get it out to the corner and some things like that and make the right read, so those are skills which we're going to still try to develop as well so he makes that right play every time.”

But with Boucher, as much as there’s a tendency to look at the highs, to look at what he could develop into with all the attention he attracts thanks to his much-improved three-point shooting, it’s really the consistency that he’ll be judged by. Just keep the good stuff and dump the bad. That’s what the Raptors are really hoping for this year.

Further Reading

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