Looking back and forth to make sure the coast was clear, Julian Champagnie had to be careful. He couldn’t get caught breaking and entering. He’d never been in trouble with the police before, and he wasn’t about to start now.
But there was something inside those doors he needed. He was obsessing over it. It was in the spring of 2020, and he was tired of being on lockdown from COVID-19. The answer to his problem was so close, he could smell it.
Champagnie had a keycard for the building but was denied access. He was determined to find a way to make that card work.
“I would shimmy the lock with the card, click the lock a little bit, then leave the card in between the door,” Champagnie told The Athletic with a nostalgic glee.
When he finally popped the door open, Champagnie walked in, flipped the lights on and there it was. What he wanted was simple: time. Time to grow. Time to sharpen. Time to forge his future.
Champagnie was standing on the St. John’s University practice court, where he was one of the freshmen on the basketball team, taking in the fresh, sterile smell of that lacquered hardwood.
He wasn’t there to commit larceny. He was just there to get shots up.
It was just about the only thing he wanted at that point of his life. This was one of the first times in his life that he ever wondered what he actually wanted.
“He’s Brooklyn in his blood,” his twin brother Justin said. “He was definitely finding a way into that gym.”
Julian Champagnie was apart from Justin for the first time, who was playing for the University of Pittsburgh. This was novel for both of them. Whatever came their way, they always had each other. Julian had been following his twin ever since Justin came out of the womb seven minutes ahead of him.
“Everywhere he went, I went,” Champagnie said. “He was always the man with the plan. I was just there.”
Nowadays, Champagnie is a mainstay for the San Antonio Spurs, the 3-and-D sidekick to Victor Wembanyama on one of the best teams in the NBA. Back then, Champagnie was still trying to find his identity as an athlete and person.
The mischievous lock-picking was textbook Champagnie twin behavior. When they were in high school, Justin would steal their mom’s car to drive them from Brooklyn to Roy Wilkins Park in Queens to meet with their AAU coach/honorary uncle Rodney Frazier and a group of players to run and lift weights. Mom would get angry every time, but they had to find a way.
“I was always the one making the noise, and he was the silent killer of the group,” Justin said. “Whereas you don’t really notice he’s there until OK, wow, he has 25 on the board right now.”
While Justin was the bigger star in high school, Julian started to come into his own his senior season, as his brother’s success helped him realize he could get a scholarship as well. It worked, as Justin was recruited to Pitt and Julian initially committed alongside him. But something didn’t feel quite right.
Justin fell in love with everything about the school and knew he wanted to commit right away. Julian said he would go there with him, but Justin could sense he didn’t really want to be there.
“When he told me (he was going to St. John’s), I wasn’t mad at all,” Justin said. “Hurt, of course, because it was going to be the first time we were apart. It didn’t hurt thinking he was going to play without me, but just the thought of being without him for the first time was, in a sense, life-changing.”
The adaptation was tough, but they FaceTimed three times a day. Justin put his brother’s games on in the locker room. Julian did the same. As the dynamic shifted from Justin taking the lead and Julian following along, they became each other’s cheerleaders and critics from afar.
“We both got to do what we got to do,” Justin said. “But then it’s like, ‘Damn, I just miss him.’ That’s my boy.”
Justin was hoping Pitt and St. John’s would play “so I could kill him,” but they never got the chance. Julian had a solid freshman season at St. John’s but knew he was capable of more. He just had to find the space and time to build the way he wished. The pandemic provided that opportunity in a way he had never imagined.
“I don’t like saying it out loud because a lot of people went through a lot during COVID, but COVID was generally the best time in my life,” Champagnie said. “I think a six- or seven-month span of nothing was the best thing for me. I got to just reevaluate, really look in the mirror and ask myself, ‘Who do I want to be?’”
When Champagnie met with St. John’s assistant coach Van Macon ahead of his sophomore season, Macon encouraged him to up his scoring average from just under 10 points to 16.
“I told him, ‘I’m trying to average 20. I don’t know what you’re talking about,’” Champagnie said. “After I told him that, my coaches, they all (were) set on a mission.”
That meant going through three workouts, multiple lifting sessions, anything to teach him how to nail a jump shot while still building up his body for power. But when Champangie sprained his ankle at the beginning of the season and had to miss three weeks, he was pissed. He didn’t want anyone getting comfortable without him on the floor.
The St. John’s staff told him to slow his roll and let his ankle heal, but they had a preseason tournament coming up and he simply refused. So he wrapped his ankle so tightly he could barely move it, put a brace on over it to lock it in, then dropped 29 points at Boston College off the bench.
“I remember getting back, and my ankle was still purple,” Champagnie said. “I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve got to be proud of myself for this, because this was not me two years ago.’ I put some serious work in, and then from there, I kind of just rode the wave.”
Julian Champagnie said being on lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to lock in on getting better. (Wendell Cruz / Imagn Images)
After a three-year college career, Champagnie went undrafted in 2022 and landed a two-way contract with the Philadelphia 76ers. Meanwhile, Justin was entering his second season with the Toronto Raptors on a two-way deal. Julian was off to a good start in the G League with the Delaware Blue Coats, averaging 21.9 points over 14 games. But after a hot start, he started to sense something was off by mid-December.
He called his agent, Nick Blatchford, after a win in Sioux Falls, in which he scored 23 points, and said things didn’t feel right. The next morning, on Valentine’s Day, Champagnie woke up to his phone ringing off the hook at 6 a.m. He ignored it and went back to sleep. A few hours later, he was up and finally in the shower when his phone started ringing again with Blatchford’s name across the screen.
Champagnie finally picked up. He was right. He was out of a job. The 76ers cut him, signing eventual dunk champion Mac McClung to his two-way slot.
“I literally threw my phone in the sink and was like, ‘I don’t even care. Let me finish the shower, I can’t deal with this right now,’” Champagnie said.
After Champagnie’s now-fiancé Cassidy Velez tried to cheer him up, they carried on with their Valentine’s Day plans and eventually went out to dinner in Wilmington, Delaware, where they were living at the time. But things only spiraled from there.
He said their meal at a high-end steakhouse chain was “the worst dinner of my life.” When the raw steak hit the table, he realized his time in Delaware was done. A few hours later, they threw a couple of suitcases in the car and drove back to her parents’ house in New York. In a day of upheaval, finally, a sense of stability.
“I don’t do well with just not knowing what’s about to happen. It’s so hard not controlling things in life, man,” Champagnie said. “My agent was like, ‘You will get an opportunity. We don’t know where it’ll be, but it’ll happen.’ But I had no clue. I was just scared.”
When Champagnie returned home to New York, he met up with his brother, who had been waived by the Raptors several months earlier. Justin had been hearing the Spurs were interested in bringing him in. As they got in the car on Feb. 16, they thought at least one of the twins may get some good news that week. The cycle of life on the NBA’s margins opens doors as swiftly as it closes them.
Then Justin’s phone rang. His agent started talking while Justin nodded, then he started grabbing the back of Julian’s head in excitement. Julian asked him what the hell he was doing.
“Don’t worry about it,” Justin said. “Nick’s going to call you in two seconds.”
Before Julian could process what was going on, there was Blatchford’s name across his screen again. He made sure to answer on the first ring this time. Turns out, Julian was the one going to San Antonio.
It was a strange position to be in. Two twins who always had each other’s backs, competing for the same lifeline to the league.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world competing for something like that, but Justin, he’s the best brother I could have asked for,” Julian said. “He could have easily been mad about that, but he had no grudge. He said, ‘Absolutely not. You go be great. … Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure my own s— out. I always have. I always will.’”
Champagnie asked Blatchford what went wrong with the 76ers. He couldn’t understand. His production with Delaware was good but clearly good wasn’t enough. Blatchford told him it didn’t matter why, he just had to accept it happened and move on. “But it took me a long-a— time to accept that,” Champagnie said.
So he went to San Antonio, telling himself that he had the last 18 games of the season to prove Philly was wrong.
“Through all 18 games, that was the thing in the back of my head. Excuse my language, but f— Philly. Like, f — them! What the hell did I do wrong?” Champagnie said with a laugh. “That was the thought that genuinely pulled me through, just f— them. ‘You’re an NBA player, and if anybody tells you you’re not, they’re smoking.’”
When he arrived, Keldon Johnson, now the longest-tenured player on the Spurs, introduced himself and asked Champagnie, “What do you do?” Champagnie responded that he shoots the basketball.
“He was like, ‘Well, just do that so I can see you next year,’” Champagnie said. “I’m like, ’S—, no problem.’”
Keldon Johnson was an early advocate for Julian Champagnie when the latter arrived in San Antonio. (Scott Wachter / Imagn Images)
Over those next eight games, Johnson kept imploring Champagnie to shoot, and Champagnie complied. Champagnie always felt like he belonged in the league but was afraid to truly say it to himself. Johnson helped him break through that barrier. But it was then-coach Gregg Popovich who helped Champagnie understand how he could stick around this time.
Champagnie earned a rotation spot after a few weeks with the Spurs but wasn’t playing his best yet. After a loss at Golden State on March 31, Popovich went to Champagnie and told him that while his shot was good enough to get him on the floor, there needed to be more.
“(He said), you gotta play harder. You gotta play with tenacity. You gotta play nasty to stay here,” Champagnie said. “You gotta work, work, work, let go of the ego. I don’t really have an ego, so that wasn’t too hard for me. The hard part was training myself to be nasty, play harder, and give a f— on defense. Those are the things you’ve got to really do to play here.”
Before Champagnie arrived in San Antonio, he hadn’t scored a point in the NBA. The idea of imposing his will on the game was antithetical to his survival instincts. But Popovich wanted more, so Champagnie would give him more. Then, the team drove through Napa Valley up to Sacramento, Champagnie dropped 26 points and took off from there.
As time went on and Champagnie found his nastiness, his fit with the Spurs began to crystallize. With Victor Wembanyama arriving as the franchise cornerstone, the Spurs needed strong shooters and defenders who could thrive without the ball and make quick decisions when it came their way. That turned Champagnie into the team’s primary fill-in starter whenever someone goes down. This season, he’s started 32 of 46 games while averaging career-highs of 11.7 points and 6.2 rebounds a night. The Spurs can sign him to a contract extension this summer, or he’ll become a free agent after the 2026-27 season.
Meanwhile, Justin Champagnie signed with the Washington Wizards in 2024 and has carved out a similar role to his twin brother. Since the start of December, Justin is averaging 10.0 points and 7.3 rebounds in 26 games, starting seven times.
After years of supporting each other from afar, they finally got to play against each other for extended minutes on Feb. 10, 2025. Naturally, Justin had to go right at his brother. Justin finished with 14 points in 17 minutes, while Julian had six points in 16 minutes as the Spurs won.
“I ain’t going to lie, it was mad fun. I was killing him,” Justin said. “I was so hyped. It was so much fun, though. This was a childhood dream.”
It wasn’t too long ago that the musical chairs of the NBA’s fringes pitted them against each other for a brief, yet consequential moment. Now that they both have cemented their place in the league, they get to enjoy the fight once again.
“It worked out the way it was supposed to work out,” Justin said. “Now he’s an intricate part of who (the Spurs) are today. So I wouldn’t have wanted it to shape out any other way.”