Chris Boucher

Boucher, a 6'10 forward, was born in Castries, Saint Lucia. He moved with his mother, Mary MacVane, to Montreal when he was five months old to see his Canadian father Jean-Guy Boucher. However, his parents split up when he was young and Boucher had a poor relationship with his father, who deemed him worthless. He grew up playing soccer and ice hockey but lived in poverty in the Montreal-Nord neighborhood. He dropped out of high school at age 16 and worked as a cook and dishwasher in a Saint Hubert restaurant. In 2012, he was offered a spot on a tournament basketball team, and scored 44 points in the tournament final. Boucher, who previously only played pickup basketball, was offered a spot on AAU team Alma Academy by coaches Igor Rwigema and Ibrahim Appiah. He accepted a spot at the Academy, which was created to help inner-city teenagers with few future prospects, to earn a high school diploma. In a game versus New Jersey's Blair Academy, Boucher attracted the interest of Division I college coaches when he had 29 points and 12 rebounds.

He played one season at New Mexico Junior College, averaging 11.8 points and 6.7 rebounds per game. Then, he went to Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming, where he was named NJCAA player of the year and led the team to a 31–5 record. He averaged 22.5 points per game on 62.7% shooting from the inside and 44.4% from three point range, 11.8 rebounds, and junior college's third-highest blocks-per-game average (4.7). Following a campus visit, Boucher transferred to Oregon, who he chose over TCU, Minnesota and Texas Tech.

At the beginning of his first year at Oregon, he worried Duck's coach Dana Altman due to his thin physique but made up for it with his energy. In his second game in a Ducks uniform on November 16, 2015, Boucher was competing against Baylor's Rico Gathers, and Boucher scored 15 points and gathered eight rebounds. He set a single season blocks record in Oregon with 110. Boucher recorded 14 points, 10 rebounds and two steals in the Ducks’ 80-68 loss to Oklahoma in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament. Following the 2015-16 season he was granted a hardship waiver to play an extra season and complete his sociology degree. He averaged 12.0 points and 6.8 rebounds in his two-year career for the Ducks. As a senior, he was named to the Pac-12 Defensive Team after leading the conference in blocks with 2.6 per game. Boucher scored 23 points and a career-high 19 rebounds against Montana in December 2016. In the Pac-12 Tournament semifinals against California on March 11, 2017, an opposing player fell on his leg awkwardly, but he continued to play and finished the game with 10 points and four rebounds. The following day, an MRI scan revealed a torn ACL, and he was ruled out for the remainder of the season.

Prior to the 2017 NBA draft, Boucher was unable to work out with teams due to his injury, which hurt his draft stock. He ultimately went undrafted, but was signed by the Golden State Warriors to a two-way contract, the same team who purchased a draft pick from the Chicago Bulls to choose his Oregon teammate Jordan Bell. Boucher became one of the first players to sign up on the NBA's newest two-way contract policy, which went into effect that season, although his deal wasn't official until July 14, 2017.