Just like Fred VanVleet is benefiting immensely from the injury to Kyle Lowry, so also is Chris “The Bouchebag” Boucher benefiting immensely from the injury to Serge Ibaka. He’s also benefiting immensely from the fact that you can’t play Marc Gasol forty minutes a game like you can play VanVleet forty minutes a game. Well, you can, but you’d have to have a body bag prepped and ready to go.
Sometimes all it takes is one injury to a key player to unlock the potential of another player. In that sense, injuries can be a good thing. That’s a callous way to look at it, but we’re seeing it right now. If Boucher was limited to four minutes per contest like he was early in the season, he would never be putting up performances like this. He would miss a three, maybe grab a rebound or block a shot, and that would be the end of it. Even his impressive G-League resume didn’t guarantee him minutes in the big leagues, nor should it.
Ibaka’s day-to-day right now with his injury, so he’ll probably be back soon, but I think that Nick Nurse needs to find minutes for Boucher once the whole lineup is back and healthy. That might mean playing Ibaka less, or playing Gasol less, or playing Powell less and having Boucher try to be a small forward. I mean, he can shoot threes and run around a lot, so how bad could it go really?