Steve Buckhantz

Steve Buckhantz is a television play-by-play announcer for the Washington Wizards.

His announcing career began as Sports Director at WTTG, a Fox affiliate in Washington, D.C. A District native, Buckhantz grew up in Arlington, Virginia where his father owned a construction company. He attended James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is of Jewish descent.

He is currently in his 9th year as the Wizards sportscaster, and has garnered a reputation for his emphatic expressions, such as "Dagger", "Backbreaker", "How good is he Phil?", "How do you like that?", "Tooough shot!", "It's good if it goes!", "Score the field goal, and he'll go to the line!", "That's hard to believe", and "Oh My!".

Buckhantz's catchphrases have seeped into the lexicon of Washington, D.C. area sports fans, who revel in using them to describe a myriad of non-sports related events (ex. males observing a friend attempting to ask a woman for her phone number exclaim "Dagger!" or "Backbreaker!" when she can be seen rejecting the friend's advances) as well as debating the subtle and compelling distinction between a "Dagger" (a made basket at a critical juncture in a game that stabs like a dagger at the opposing team's chance of victory) and a "Backbreaker" (a made basket at a critical juncture in a game that breaks any chance that the opposing team will win).

He works alongside analyst Phil Chenier, a former member of the Washington Bullets. He currently resides in Vienna, Virginia.

Buckhantz is also well known for being overly anti-climactic and pronouncing the 2nd "O" in the word "sophomore". In addition, he has a strange habit of informing his viewers how many three-point field goals a player has made for the season. Example: "And Gilbert Arenas drains the three from the corner! That's his 78th of the season."