As the Wizards polished off their impressive road victory over the Knicks on Tuesday night, the final moments contained just one bit of drama: when would Steve Buckhantz break out the ‘Dagger!’ The moment finally came on a Garrett Temple jumper with about 40 seconds left; the ball went in, Buckhantz blasted out his signature call, fans rejoiced online, and the victory was complete.

That Buckhantz would break out a call he has used hundreds of times was nothing new. That people on the Internet would wait for, and then celebrate that call was a relatively recent development. The Wizards’ longtime television voice — he started in 1997 — credits the latest jump in Dagger popularity to the rise of social media, and to repeated promotion from the Junkies on 106.7 The Fan.

And with fans tweeting him about Daggers, and asking him about Daggers at the arena, and talking about Daggers on their own, Buckhantz figured it was time to take this thing to another level.

Thus, about a year ago he worked with a friend — Josh Frey of On Sale Promos — to design his own red Dagger T-shirts, which he would sell on his own Web site, DaggerSports.com.

Separately, he met with Monumental Sports’s Zach Leonsis and a representative from Aramark, who were excited about designing Dagger threads of their own They came up with more stylized blue Dagger T-shirts to be sold in Verizon Center’s retail locations; those shirts were available at Saturday’s home opener and will continue to be sold inside the arena.

Dagger, in other words, is no longer just a late-game exclamation; it’s a lifestyle.

“The whole Dagger thing, I think it’s something that fans can relate to, that they associate with me, in a sense,” Buckhantz said. “It’s in the vernacular of people, many of whom don’t even know that it was me that started using it in this area. But I think the people who know the Wizards and know our broadcast know the word and the term.”

Indeed, Buckhantz still says he’s Daggered no better Dagger than for Gilbert Arenas’s playoff game-winner in Chicago, which is already nearly a decade old. Many of his most famous Daggers remain Arenas-related, or even came in the dark years, for guys like Jordan Crawford. As I noted the last time I wrote about this, in 2009, fans scream the word when they see Buckhantz in public, and team employees joke with him about it, and video highlights were made for it.

“I just know in my mind I had this visual of the player just sort of driving a stake into the heart of the opposition — this was finality, this was the final shot, the game winner,” he told me then, while discussing the origins of his call. “And for whatever reason — and I don’t know what the reason was — ‘The Dagger!’ just popped out of my mouth. I had no idea it would stick. I just knew it felt comfortable to me. It was very climactic, emphatic; a definite exclamation point to the end of the game. It just felt good.”

Had the Wizards gone further in the playoffs last season, the shirts might have appeared at Verizon Center then. But Buckhantz said this season is the perfect time for their rise. And in fact, he’s already handed some out some of his shirts to friends and colleagues, to positive reviews.

“I think [the call] has more anticipation from the fans than ever, just like the team does,” Buckhantz said. “The expectations for the team are higher, and with the explosion of social media, now I get people who tweet me all the time — looking forward to a season full of Daggers, can’t wait for more Daggers. I get that all the time. Fans sort of are anticipating it now. And in that sense, it’s ratcheted things up a notch.”