How meditation liberated Raptors' Chris Boucher

When Chris Boucher was struggling on-court during the 2021-22 season, he turned to meditation to refocus on his strengths and the value his type of play can add to the Toronto Raptors.

Video Transcript

- Around this time last year when your big turnaround started, you shared a comment about how film study and meditation were very instrumental in that change. I'm sort of wondering like are you willing to comment about how that practice has evolved in the years since and you've started out and you've been really consistent and looked great. So how has that evolved and how does it play a role in your preparation week in, week out?

CHRIS BOUCHER: I got to a point where I just didn't know what was wrong. I know myself as a player, and my shot was not going in and I just-- There was so much stuff going wrong that I didn't know what I had to do. So the one thing I told myself was it might be a mental. I talked to my people and they always told me, well, you've always been the same player but we don't feel like you're playing the same way. We don't feel like your energy is at the right place. So I ended up doing a lot of meditation just to focus on myself, just be free-minded.

And I ended up making me realize that there's more important stuff than being a scorer or whatever. So now I'm just in here like trying to take the hits, trying to play hard, do the little things. Because obviously we got a lot of talents and just out of 10 players that we really play in that game, I think there's a lot of stuff that I could do that nobody could do too.

[APPLAUSE]