Allow the Spurs to Reintroduce Themselves

Before the Spurs hosted the Knicks on New Year's Eve, in the tunnels of the Frost Bank Center, there was one sound that made sense and another that seemed confusing at first.

The first sound was a rumble in the media work room that Victor Wembanyama had just put himself through a remarkable pregame warmup in terms of marksmanship, intensity, and duration. Witnesses stated that he insisted on repeating drills, ran up and down the court at game speed, and shot laser beams out of his eyeballs.

This sound was not surprising at all. The Spurs had lost a pair of frustrating home games after a Christmas Day victory in Oklahoma City catapulted them into the spotlight as contenders. Wembanyama is always determined to win. He needs no bulletin board material but also seems to love both consuming it and creating it.

The East-leading Knicks are a physical team, and they bested San Antonio earlier this month in the NBA Cup Final.

"We're looking forward to it, we owe them one," Wembanyama said ahead of the rematch. "We owe ourselves one, more than anything."

The buzz caused by Wemby's pregame preparation was interrupted by the louder and more surprising sound: a Public Service Announcement sponsored by Just Blaze and the good folks at Roc-A-Fella Records.

"Fellow Americans, it is with the utmost pride and sincerity that I present this recording as a living testament and recollection of history in the making during our generation."

"ALLOW ME TO REINTRODUCE MYSELF," Jay-Z bellowed.

Arena DJs are wise to avoid Hov when hosting any team from the Empire State. The science is clear. Multiple peer-reviewed studies show that playing this song or anything else off The Black Album provides New Yorkers with a measurable boost in all statistical categories, and in some cases temporary superpowers.

DJ Quake is a professional who knows this, but the sound wasn't coming from him. It came from the Spurs players hyping themselves up before the game, almost certainly with Keldon Johnson at the controls of a large boombox.

The Black Album resonates far beyond the five boroughs, and suddenly feels hyper relevant to this Spurs team and thier superstar. Shawn Carter's magnum opus is full of potent reflections on some the biggest philosophical questions facing Wembanyama and San Antonio at this point in their meteoric rise.

"When you first come in the game, they try to play you. Then you drop a couple of hits, look how they wave to you. From Marcy to Madison Square, to the only thing that matters in just a matter of years."

As fate would have it, Wemby's status appears to be at an all-time high. He's managing the competition and criticism that comes with going from the bottom of the bottom to the Top of the Pops. He's faced with the paradoxical balance of staying humble enough to work hard every day while being confident enough believe, perhaps not incorrectly, that he is the best in the world at what he does.

The same guy who brashly declared himself the best rapper alive closed the same album with wisdom from his mentor about the constant hunger necessary to reach that level.

"The key to staying on top of things is treat everything like it's your first project, know what I'm saying? Like it's your first day, like... when you was an intern... that's how you try to treat things," Biggie Smalls once said. "Just stay hungry."

Wembanyama knows he's great and wants to prove it every day. It's why he warmed up so hard, and why he kept up that effort level all game. He was on pace for a 40-point performance before he skied for a board in the fourth quarter and came down awkwardly, hyperextending his knee.

He tried to lobby his way back onto the court to participate in the 19-point comeback and said after the game that the team had to hold him back. When asked after the game about balancing injury risk and effort level, he admitted that he errs on the side of giving his all.

"It’s a difficult line to navigate," he told Maxime Aubin in French. "When I think about how I got this hyperextension, I tell myself I could be more careful on that kind of play. But on the other hand, I have the responsibility to give everything for the team. Sometimes we need that extra energy."

He is the Michael Shumacher of the Spurs roster, travelling Mach V. As is appropriate for a competitor of his caliber, he wanted to travel to Indiana for the next game and keep his engine at the redline. As is appropriate for the organization tasked with protecting his long-term health, the Spurs pulled him into the garage for some repairs. Luckily, it sounds like he'll be back on track soon.

The Spurs needed a spark to complete their biggest comeback of the season with Wembanyama out, and Brooklyn's Julian Champagnie got his grown man on.

Imbued with the auditory performance enhancer of bravado-laced musical soul food, Champagnie started in place of the injured Devin Vassell and effortlessly shattered a Spurs record that had stood for 28 years and a day. He set a career high with 36 points and drilled 11 3-point shots, which broke Chuck Person's franchise record of nine.

Champagnie dribbled the ball just three times in the entirety of his highlight clip: twice on the same play in transition and once because he was just so wide open. He is the first player to score 36 without attempting a 2-point shot. It was a radical display of knowing one's role and committing to it.

HISTORIC HEATER FROM JULIAN CHAMPAGNIE!

🔥 36 PTS (career-high)
🔥 11 3PM (career-high)
🔥 6 REB

Lifted the Spurs to victory behind a new franchise record for threes in a game! pic.twitter.com/rofr3aMnFw
— NBA (@NBA) January 1, 2026

The Spurs have talked all homestand and all season about sticking to their process and committing to the things they can control. Champagnie did his work individually, and when the team's offensive execution fed him clean shots he cashed in.

"His rebounding has been excellent, his team defense has been mostly very good," said Mitch Johnson, who was named Western Conference Coach of the Month after the Spurs posted a record of 12-3 in December with three wins over the defending-champion Thunder.

"He's landed in a place of very comfortable and content in terms of where his shots can come from and how to play," Johnson said. And I think he's one of those guys that when we play the right way, it typically produces pretty good opportunities for him, and he took advantage of that. And sometimes, when we don't play the right way, he can be, unfortunately, a victim of losing some of those opportunities."

"I just kept shooting the basketball," said Champagnie, who didn't let the slump that he and the team have been in distract him from doing his job and honoring the Basketball Gods. "Coming into the game I told myself to shoot the ball. If you get it shoot it, if you don't, play defense."

"The drought will define a man when the well dries up. You learn the worth of water, without work you thirst til you die, yup!"

Champagnie's supernova performance matched the record for most 3s in a game by an undrafted player. The disappointment of not hearing his name called that night is a key part of why he scrapped his way to here and now.

"I was it was tough, it was a hard night obviously," he said. "I cried a lot, was pissed, but I think it's just fuel to fire. I think anytime you you kind of get a disappointment like that... you gotta have the right perspective towards it. Can't you can't look down on it. You can't be sad about it. You kind of gotta just turn around and say, alright it's over. I'm going somewhere. Make it work."

"All the hustlers they love it, just to see one of us make it."

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