Philadelphia 76ers: Julian Champagnie is a big win(g) on a two-way deal

The Philadelphia 76ers need a big wing. How many times have you read some version of that sentence, 10? 100? 1000? Goodness, it’s been written in this very blog more times than I can count and for what feels like half a decade now.

And yet, like the Philadelphia Phillies’ lack of relief pitching or Howie Roseman’s unwillingness to draft a linebacker in the first round of an NFL Draft, the Sixers have never quite been able to secure the sort of supersized contributor needed to match up defensively against players like LeBron James and Kevin Durant while also being able to hit open 3s over smaller defenders… until now.

That’s right; if you opted to go to sleep like a normal person once the Sixers traded Danny Green and pick 23 to the Memphis Grizzlies for De’Anthony Melton, then you probably didn’t notice that Daryl Morey opted to sign Julian Champagnie, a 6-foot-8 guard from St. John’s, to his second two-way contract – Charlie Brown Jr. is signed to the other one  – ahead of the 2022-23 NBA season.

Yes, you read that right; the Philadelphia 76ers found themselves a super-duper-sized collegiate guard – at least according to Basketball-Reference – who will probably play forward at the NBA level but could ultimately prove to be an interesting performer moving forward.

Julian Champagnie is an ideal developmental prospect for the Philadelphia 76ers.

Had the Philadelphia 76ers kept their first-round pick, the vast majority of fans wanted nothing more than to see one thing and one thing only next to the player’s name: Foward.

Small forward? Power forward? Didn’t matter; as long as the player in question could theoretically start between James Harden and Tobias Harris or at least play a good number of minutes in the role, many a fan would have declared the pick a success.

Unfortunately – if you want to put it that way – the draft didn’t break that way for the Sixers. After watching players like Jalen Williams, Tari Eason, Dalen Terry, and Christian Braun come off the board in quick succession, the team opted to trade the pick alongside Danny Green for De’Anthony Melton, a player who will undoubtedly fit into the team’s system as a two-way, switchable guard/wing but not quite the 6-foot-8 switching wing more than a few fans were hoping for.

Enter Julian Champagnie, the collegiate Red Storm member who near-single-handedly willed St. John’s to two winning seasons in the Big East.

A native son of Brooklyn, New York, Champagnie began his run with St. John’s as a complementary performer alongside LJ Figueroa and Rasheem Dunn before shouldering a big-time role as the top option in Mike Anderson over his final two seasons of collegiate basketball. Though his stats fluctuated ever so slightly in the wrong direction from his sophomore season to his junior, Champagnie still averaged 19.5 points, seven rebounds, 1.7 steals, and 1.1 blocks per game, while draining 35.6 percent of his 6.3 attempts per game from beyond the arc and 42.2 percent of his 16.4 shots per game from the field.

Are those efficiency numbers particularly good? Eh, as previously stated, Champagnie was more efficient in 2020-21 than in 2021-22, but hey, when you’re the top offensive performer on a middle-of-the-road team without a ton of five-star players on the roster, some inefficiency is to be expected when one player takes 25.7 percent of his team’s snaps.

Now tasked with being the Sixers’ 17th man, Champagnie can take a step back, work on the intricacies of his game, and hopefully learn the ins and outs of playing small forward at the NBA level while putting in work as a member of the Blue Coats. While Coby Karl’s program isn’t undefeated in player development, he has worked wonders with players like Paul Reed, Charles Bassey, and Jaden Springer, who could all play important roles on the team this fall.

If Champagnie can develop into a driving marksman capable of holding things down on the other end of the court – a Jae Crowder-type player, if you will – his addition as a UDFA might just go down as the steal of a draft where the Sixers didn’t have a single pick.

If there’s one thing Daryl Morey is very good at indeed, it’s team-building on a budget. He seldom used first-round picks on players in Houston, let alone actually extended them to long-term contracts, and yet, he would routinely find interesting options on the margins, either via second-round picks, free agency, or undrafted free agency. While only time will tell if Julian Champagnie can join that long and healthy legacy of success stories, the Philadelphia 76ers clearly liked the St. John’s product enough to sign him to a two-way contract and will thus receive a first-hand seat to his on-field development for the foreseeable future.