Top 50 Cal Pros: No. 46 -- Charles Johnson Was Big When It Mattered

We are counting down Cal’s top 50 athletes based on their careers as post-collegiate professionals. Their performance as Golden Bears is not factored into the rankings.

46. CHARLES JOHNSON

Years at Cal: 1968 to 1971

Sport: Basketball

Pro teams: Golden State Warriors, Washington Bullets

Age: Died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 58

Hometown: Corpus Christi, Texas

Why we ranked him here: Drafted in the sixth round by the Warriors in 1971, Johnson went on to become the only former Cal player to win a pair of NBA championships. But he wasn’t an immediate success story with the Warriors. Johnson failed to show up for an afternoon workout during two-a-days his rookie year, and never returned. It wasn’t until a year later that coach Al Attles discovered Johnson had left to play a season in Mexico. He was back in the Bay Area and made the Warriors roster in 1972-73. Two years later, in his third season, Johnson averaged a career-best 10.9 points with seven 20-point games on a team led by Rick Barry. He also showed himself be a tough defender at just 6-feet tall. The Warriors were surprise NBA champions in 1975 and Johnson — also known as C.J. or Charlie — raised his game in the postseason, averaging 12.5 points in 17 games. That included a 24-point performance in a first-round win over the Seattle SuperSonics. Johnson averaged 7.9 points over 400 games in 5-plus seasons with the Warriors before being traded to Washington in the midst of the 1977-78 season. Now playing for the team he helped beat in the ’75 NBA Finals, Johnson was acquired after All-Star guard Phil Chenier — another former Cal player — was lost to a season-ending injury. Johnson averaged 8.3 points 28 regular-season games for the Bullets that season and and contributed 10.2 per game in 21 postseason outings, scoring double digits 10 times off the bench on the way to the 1978 NBA crown. Johnson retired after the 1978-79 season.