When Chase Budinger was selected for the US beach volleyball team for the Olympic Games in Paris, it appeared that the selection committee had pulled the strings.
Budinger – a tall, blond, Californian cliché (and in case it’s unclear, his name is hard) G) – is not alone each sand-strewn leviathan. He’s a 36-year-old NBA retiree. The 6ft 7in swingman wouldn’t look out of place among the motley crew of professionals leading the US men’s basketball team through Olympic qualification, while players like LeBron James and Steph Curry are otherwise busy. Instead, he’s poised to become the rare human being who has played minutes in the NBA And participated in the Olympic Games in a sport other than basketball.
For those who only know Budinger as a white man from the NBA dunk contest and are used to pinning their hopes for a medal on the US women’s beach volleyball teamhis Olympic debut will undoubtedly come as a shock. “I miss basketball,” he said in a Yahoo Sports interview with U.S. beach volleyball queen Kerri Walsh Jennings, a three-time gold medalist. “I mean, it was such a big part of my life for so long. But I’ve kind of put that part of my life aside and started this new chapter.”
Budinger was not alone each basketball player. In high school, he was named California’s Mr. Basketball and was named co-MVP of the 2006 McDonald’s All-American showcase with Kevin Durant, who would go on to become a 14-time (and counting) NBA All-Star. At the University of Arizona, Budinger proved to be such a talent that no one was surprised when he declared for the draft his freshman year. But he changed his mind at the last minute and went back to school. He stayed for two more years, finishing third on Arizona’s all-time scoring list before being drafted by the Houston Rockets in the 2009 NBA draft.
In total, Budinger played seven seasons with Houston, Minnesota, Indiana and Phoenix, where he distinguished himself with his long-range shooting and his leaping ability, which still serves him well on sand. Many NBA fans still have fond memories of Budinger in his backwards cap during the 2012 NBA slam dunk contest, fly over P Diddy for a one-handed jam. After playing a final season in Spain, Budinger, almost 30 years old, kicked off his basketball shoes, after earning more than $18 million in his NBA careerto try his luck in professional beach volleyball. In retrospect, he was far from a contender.
Don’t be surprised if someone calls Budinger a much better volleyball player than a three-and-D specialist during these Games. At La Costa Canyon High, located on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, Budinger led his team to three indoor volleyball state championships en route to being named high school player of the year (by none other than Volleyball Magazine) as a senior. Despite being recruited by UCLA and Southern Cal to play indoor volleyball, Budinger signed with Arizona’s top-rated basketball program after being courted by its Hall of Fame basketball coach. “Lute Olson came to me when I was a nobody,” Budinger told the Tucson Citizen in 2005. “That made an impression on me.”
As Budinger continues to tell it, even when he was playing with All-Stars like Yao Ming and Paul George in the NBA and playing beach volleyball with fellow hoopers Kevin Love and Richard Jefferson for fun, Budinger assumed he would return to his first love at some point. “Most guys are a little confused when they quit a sport, or they’re a little lost for the next journey,” Budinger said in a 2018 appearance on the Sandcast volleyball podcast“I was lucky enough to be able to switch straight away to another sport and play at the highest level.”
He made it seem like he had been on the beach tour for years. In 2018 he was named rookie of the year And Most Improved Player of the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP), the largest and longest-running beach volleyball tour in the US. The following season he won his first professional title. Normally, you would expect an athlete who changes sports in his late 20s to at least some headwinds along the way. But among the many extra-tall and coordinated athletes who bounce back and forth between volleyball and basketball, there are a few who stand out above the rest.
Before Budinger, there was Jud Buechler, Arizona’s volleyball-basketball dynamo. After playing both sports all four years at Arizona, he entered the NBA as a second-round pick and emerged as a valuable three-point shooter for Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls (the conversations they must have had about changing sports!) – but even Buechler played only a handful of professional beach volleyball events in his prime.
Before Buechler, there was Keith Erickson – a tall kid from SoCal who helped UCLA repeat with national college basketball titles while representing USA Volleyball at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (Erickson’s scholarship was even split between the basketball and baseball teams). He played 12 NBA seasons, winning a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1972. UCLA’s John Wooden, one of the greatest basketball coaches in history, called Erickson the “best athlete“he had once worked with. Budinger, who thrived despite having different playing partners in each of his first five AVP seasons, seems cut from the same cloth.
After six years of working with pro Miles Evans, Budinger has, improbably, become even better. Still, no one expected the duo to represent the US at the Olympics. According to Volleyball MagazineAt the start of the 2023 qualifying season in January, a poll was conducted among beach volleyball fans asking which two U.S. teams would make it to the Olympics. Budinger and Evans shared 1% of the vote with other teams. But over time, Budinger and Evans would develop into a formidable duo, rebounding from tournament setbacks the previous year to climb to No. 2 in the U.S. rankings and No. 13 in the world. After the third-ranked U.S. team of Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb lost in the first round of the last Olympic qualifying tournament, Budinger and Miles were told they were going to Paris.
As for how far they can go, the U.S. men haven’t won a medal in beach volleyball since Beijing 2008, when the dominant duo of Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser won gold. But Budinger believes he and Evans can reach that level, in no small part because He takes the game more seriously than the average volleyball player. When asked how his NBA career has prepared him for volleyball, Budinger told Walsh Jennings that he doesn’t subscribe to the typical lifestyle of a beach volleyball pro “of just training and then going home and chilling and doing whatever at night.”
He added: “[It’s a matter of] just like, ‘This is my profession. This is my job.’ You have to do everything from watching movies to making sure your body is right, making sure your recovery is perfect, eating the right foods. I’ve really tried to make that a priority in my life and then translate it into [Evans].”
The pressure is nothing new for Budinger – not only each Olympic beach volleyball player, after all. He’s the man with the killer crossover.