Julian Champagnie pointed to the Spurs’ roster continuity as a factor in his impressive sharpshooting in Tuesday night’s 130-103 pounding of the winless Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n
The fifth-year forward pumped in a season-high 26 points on the strength of 8 of 13 from 3-point range in 25\u00a0minutes off the bench.<\/p>\n
“They do a good job of finding both of us when you\u2019re open,” he said of his teammates feeding him and Victor Wembanyama, who finished with a season-best 29 points on 14 of 21 from the field.<\/p>\n
“Over the past couple of years, we\u2019ve grown the chemistry and grown the relationships,” Champagnie added. “We all know where we want to be on the court. I think it\u2019s a product of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, general manager Brian Wright made sure the Spurs were the NBA\u2019s most intact team heading into 2026-27 after the young squad reached the NBA Finals last season.<\/p>\n
From\u00a0Wembanyama on down to No. 4 guard Jordan McLaughlin, they returned an average of 96.2% of last season’s minutes, points, starts and win shares, according to rotogrinders.com.<\/p>\n
“We wanted a lot of people to be back because of what we experienced last year,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Champagnie six 3-pointers in the second period tied a franchise record. His eight 3-pointers in the first half matched his own record set last New Year\u2019s Eve against New York when he finished with a club-record 11 3-pointers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Spurs’ season-high 35 assists also underscored their on-court harmony. Four starters finished with five or more helpers, with\u00a0Devin Vassell’s season-high eight topping the chart.<\/p>\n
Their unselfishness benefited Champagnie, who received a new three-year, $45 million contract in the summer that will keep him with the team through the 2028-29 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing that was good to see is our team did a good job of recognizing where he was once he got going,” Johnson said. “We\u2019ve had some time in the past four years where we\u2019ve done a poor job of that. And not intentionally. I think we\u2019ve grown in that aspect a little bit. Tonight was an example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Julian Champagnie pointed to the Spurs’ roster continuity as a factor in his impressive sharpshooting in Tuesday night’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-944326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}