Before the 1971 NBA draft, Bullets General Manager Bob Ferry went to scout University of California guard Charles “CJ” Johnson. Ferry wound up not taking Johnson, who went in the sixth round to Golden State. But months after the draft, the NBA instituted what it called the “hardship draft.” This was for players whose college class had not yet graduated (previously a draft requirement), but could make themselves eligible to be drafted by demonstrating that their family needed money. The draft order was determined by worst to first record the year before with any team that used a draft pick giving up a corresponding pick for the following year.

Chenier, a junior, who had teamed in the backcourt with Johnson at Cal, was remembered by Ferry, who made him the first “hardship” player in NBA history as the then-Baltimore Bullets gave up their first round pick for 1972. And it wasn’t like the Bullets were hurting for guards. In training camp, just weeks after being drafted, Chenier met up with the likes of Fred Carter, Archie Clark, Kevin Loughery and an in-his-prime at 27, all time great Earl “The Pearl” Monroe. Each of them had played key roles on a team that had played in the NBA finals the previous season. Chenier told me years later that he was baffled why Ferry had bothered to take him.

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Things worked themselves out. Monroe got into a contract dispute and was traded to the Knicks for Mike Riordan and Dave Stallworth, Loughery hurt his back and Carter was traded. Chenier, with a massive Afro and a sweet-as-sugar jumper, became a perfect compliment to the inside scoring of Elvin Hayes and the bruising rebounding of Wes Unseld. He made the all-rookie team, but didn’t provide quite enough to get the Bullets past the hated Knicks in the playoffs. The Bullets stayed another season in Baltimore before moving to Washington and the brand new Capital Centre in 1973, becoming the Capital Bullets. You put on your leisure suit and platform shoes and made the trek to Landover whenever you could. We finally had an NBA team.

Chenier became an all-star that first season in Washington, averaging nearly 22 points a game, but the Bullets again met their demise in the playoffs in another classic seven-game series against the Knicks. The came the 1974-75 season. Hayes and Unseld were in their primes, the Capital Centre with the Telscreen (hot new technology — video replays in the arena) was rocking and the Bullets tied Boston for the best record in the league with 60 wins. After knocking out Buffalo and the defending champion Celtics in the playoffs, they were favored to beat Golden State in the Finals. The Warriors had struggled to get though the Western Conference finals, barely getting past a Chicago Bulls team coached by Dick Motta in seven games. They had Rick Barry and a bunch of other guys.

The last local professional sports championship had been won by the Redskins 33 years earlier. It looked like we were about to get another. Chenier led the Bullets with 23 points per game in the finals, but Barry averaged nearly 30 and those “other guys,” who went nine deep, swept the Bullets in four games in one of the most crushing disappointments in local sports history. One of those “other guys” was the same “CJ” that Ferry had scouted when he discovered Chenier four years earlier.

Chenier again led the Bullets in scoring during the 75-76 season, which ended in the seventh game of the Eastern Conference semifinals at the buzzer in Cleveland, preceding the firing of coach K.C. Jones. Motta was the replacement and again there was an exit in the Eastern Conference semifinals of the 76-77 season to Houston.

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Yes, Houston was in the East. The NBA-ABA merger forced some screwy geography.

The 1977-78 season was seen as something as sort of a last chance for the team that been to the finals in 1971 and 75, but got swept both times. Hayes and Unseld were each entering season No. 10 and the league’s teams of the future looked like Philadelphia, with Julius Erving and George McGinnis, and Portland, with Bill Walton. Those were young teams that had played for the championship the year before. The only hope for Washington was that the addition of veteran Bobby Dandridge would compliment the young backcourt of 24-year-old Kevin Grevey and 27-year-old Chenier to make the now Washington Bullets a contender.

Those Bullets would eventually reach the promised land, but Chenier, who had knocked down 53 points in a win over Portland without the benefit of the three-point line on December 6, 1972, in front of an announced crowd of 1,888 at the old Baltimore Civic Center, would never get there. Just 36 games into the season, a back injury put Chenier on the shelf for the rest of the year. On January 24, 1978, Ferry called Charles Johnson (yeah that guy), who had been cut by the Warriors three weeks earlier and was just waking up in his home in Oakland. Ferry said, “CJ, we need you. And we need you tonight.”

Johnson hopped on a cross-country flight and landed at Dulles, where a helicopter was waiting for him. After arriving in the Capital Centre parking lot, Johnson had his uniform on 15 minutes before tipoff and played 13 minutes. “CJ” would go on to become a fan favorite and played a key role in the Bullets’ upset of Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference finals and in winning a championship over Seattle.

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Meanwhile, Chenier tried resting his ailing back before finally giving in to disc surgery a month before training camp. He managed to play 27 games during the 78-79 season — the last time the franchise won a division title — but wasn’t much of a factor. He gave it another go in 79-80, but on December 5, 1979, one day short of the seventh anniversary of his 53-point game, Chenier, a three-time all-star, was traded to Indiana for “future considerations.”

“We went with Phil a long time,” Motta said. “Phil has been an integral part of our success in the past. I look at this as taking the burden off Phil. I think people kinda got impatient with him.”

Chenier, only 28 at the time, said, “I feel good and I have no aches and pains associated with my back.”

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The words said one thing, the play on the court said another. The Pacers released him after 23 games and he finished out the season with the same Warriors who had crushed his team’s soul five years earlier. Short of his 30th birthday, one of the youngest players ever to come into the NBA, was through. Post-back surgery, Chenier played in only 79 games, making him one of Washington’s “what if” stories. Even more so, one wonders what this incredible shooter would have done with the three-point line, which didn’t come into the league until after his surgery. Even with a bad back, he was 6-of-15 from long distance in his limited time on the court.

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Ironically, you never heard much from Chenier as a player. He didn’t do any talking on the court and he wasn’t much of a quote in the locker room. Interview shows weren’t what they are today and talking was usually left to the coach. Thus Motta’s, “the opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings” remains the enduring quote from the 1978 championship run. To see Chenier emerge as a broadcaster a few years after his playing career ended was a surprise. And in that role, he was something of local trailblazer.

The list of Bullets/Wizards analysts is short. And getting the job didn’t require much of a résumé. When the Bullets first moved to town, WDCA Channel 20 did about 20 games a year. Somehow a GW law student named Jerry Kapstein talked his way on to the broadcast with the late, great Jim Karvellas. Nobody really asked how he got there. Later, James Brown, who’s become a broadcasting giant but in those days worked for Xerox, was brought in to work with Karvellas mainly on the strength of his great high school playing career at DeMatha. When Home Team Sports launched in 1983, Unseld, just a couple of years removed from his playing career and someone who never seemed to like talking to anybody — even his own players when he coached — did a limited number of games with Mel Proctor.

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That was pretty much it until Chenier came aboard with Proctor in time for the 1984-85 season. He’s been there ever since, never overpowering the broadcast, always a strong part of the flow. About a third of his way through Chenier’s run, Proctor left and was replaced by Steve Buckhantz. The transition for Chenier was as smooth as his jump shot in his prime, although that was after some history between new television partners was forgotten.

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Chenier was still playing when Buckhantz spent some of his college summers refereeing in the old Urban Coalition league where NBA players like Chenier would often turn up to stay in shape in the offseason. That’s where they would first meet and Buckhantz recalled, “Phil was my second favorite Bullet of all time behind Earl Monroe. It killed me to call a technical on him, but he called me a ‘Stupid (expletive) — twice.”

That didn’t turn out to be an issue when Buckhantz started filling in for Proctor in the mid 1990s. “Phil made me feel like I belonged,” Buckhantz said, “he was very easy to work with from the start.”

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The new play by play team began working together full time as the Bullets changed their name to Wizards at the start of the 1997-98 season. Their 20-year working relationship has become a friendship that Buckhantz says he’ll cherish for the rest of his life and that he is saddened by his partner’s upcoming exit. As he puts it, about Phil Chenier as both a broadcaster and a man, “What’s not to like?”