Chris Boucher is no longer a low-paid third-stringer whose employment is anything but guaranteed, and he looks around the Raptors locker room and doesn’t see Marc Gasol or Serge Ibaka — a couple of highly accomplished veterans who stood between him and regular usage in games that mattered.
He’s secure, comfortable, someone the team has bestowed great riches upon and it’s all added up to give the 27-year-old Montreal-raised St. Lucian a sense of true belonging for perhaps the first time in his career.
“It’s my third year here, so you can see that a lot of things are coming naturally: knowing the plays, knowing the sets, what we’re doing on defence,” Boucher said in a video conference call Monday morning.