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.
