Julian Champagnie will be on the floor Thursday night because the San Antonio Spurs are facing elimination: Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder airs on NBC and Peacock, and the 24-year-old forward is being asked to do something the Spurs cannot afford to lose—score.
Champagnie grew into that role the hard way. Born in 2001 in Staten Island and raised in Brooklyn, he starred at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School alongside his twin brother Justin, who now plays for the Washington Wizards. Champagnie played at St. John's from 2019 to 2022, earned First Team All-Big East honors as a sophomore and junior, declared for the 2022 NBA Draft, went undrafted and signed a two-way deal with Philadelphia. After splitting time between the 76ers and the Delaware Blue Coats, he was waived on February 14, 2023; San Antonio claimed him off waivers two days later and put him on a new two-way contract.
The numbers that made the Spurs cling to him are clear: Champagnie played just 15 games in the 2022-23 season when San Antonio finished 22-60, then played all 82 games this season as the Spurs surged to a 62-20 record. He averaged 11.1 points per game in the 2025-26 regular season and shot 38.1 percent from three-point range. That shooting and his defense are why, as one national broadcast put it, San Antonio needs someone other than Victor Wembanyama to produce—and why the same broadcast suggested Champagnie might be the most important Spur not named Victor, given his "sweet" three-point shooting and gritty defense.
But the series has eaten into that promise. Through five games of the Western Conference Finals, Champagnie is averaging 10.6 points and making just 27.8 percent of his threes. He answered with a 22-point outing in Game 5—17 of those points came in the first half—but the dip in efficiency is the story heading into Game 6. He also produced a remarkable scoring burst earlier in the playoffs, pouring in 13 straight points from 8:21 to 4:38 of the first quarter; as Michael C. Wright noted, that was the first time a Spur had strung together at least 13 consecutive points in a playoff game since Kawhi Leonard scored 16 straight in Game 4 of the 2017 first round versus Memphis.
The friction here is obvious: San Antonio needs Champagnie to look like the 38.1 percent three-point shooter he was across the regular season, yet the evidence through five conference-final games shows him well off that mark. He can deliver—Game 5 and that 13-point streak are proof—but the question is whether he can do it on demand in a win-or-go-home setting against the defending champions.
This is also a human story. Champagnie’s climb—from undrafted prospect to a core rotation piece on a 62-win team—frames Thursday’s stakes. He has defended teammates publicly before, including speaking up after the restroom-video incident during Game 2 (see and he has a twin brother thriving elsewhere in the league. Tonight, though, his legacy on this Spurs team will be measured in makes and misses: if he finds his green light from deep and holds the defensive edge that earned him his role, San Antonio stays alive; if he does not, the season ends.
The most consequential thing to watch is simple and immediate—will Champagnie shoot like the regular-season player the Spurs relied on, or will his series slump continue? The answer will determine whether this Spurs run extends past Thursday night or concludes with a single young forward marked by flashes of brilliance and a few too many whiffs on the biggest stage.
