When Chase Budinger was named in the US men’s beach volleyball team for the Paris Olympics, it seemed as if the selection panel had got its wires crossed.
Budinger – a tall, blond, California cliche (and in case it is unclear, his is a hard g) – isn’t just any sand-sprinkled leviathan. He’s a 36-year-old NBA retiree. Really, the 6ft 7in swingman wouldn’t look out of place among the motley crew of journeymen who carry the US basketball team through the Olympic qualifiers while the likes of LeBron James and Steph Curry are otherwise occupied. Instead, he’s poised to become a rare human who has logged minutes in the NBA and competed in the Olympics in a sport other than basketball.
For those who only know of Budinger as a white guy from the NBA dunk contest and are accustomed to pinning their medal hopes on the US women’s beach volleyball team, his Olympic debut surely comes as a shock. “I miss basketball,” he said in a Yahoo Sports interview with American beach volleyball royalty 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 kinda put that part of my life away and started this new chapter.”
Budinger wasn’t just any basketball player though. In high school, he was named California’s Mr Basketball and voted 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 after his freshman year. But he had a late change of heart and went back to school. He stayed two more years, finishing third on Arizona’s all-time scoring list before the Houston Rockets acquired him in the 2009 NBA draft.
Altogether, Budinger lasted seven seasons with Houston, Minnesota, Indiana and Phoenix – distinguishing himself with his long-distance shooting and leaping ability, which still serves him on sand. Many NBA fans still have fond memories of Budinger in his backwards cap at the 2012 NBA slam dunk contest, skying over P Diddy for a one-handed jam. After playing a final season in Spain, Budinger, pushing 30 years old, kicked off his basketball sneakers, after earning more than $18m in his NBA career, to try his hand at professional beach volleyball. In hindsight, he was the furthest thing from a long shot.
In fact, don’t be surprised if someone over the course of these Games declares Budinger a far better volleyball player than a three-and-D specialist. At La Costa Canyon High, set along the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, Budinger anchored his team to three indoor volleyball state championships on the way to being named high school player of the year (by no less than Volleyball Magazine) as a senior. Despite being recruited to play volleyball by UCLA and Southern Cal, Budinger signed on to Arizona’s top-rated basketball program after being courted by their hall of fame coach. “Lute Olson came to me when I was like, a nobody,” Budinger told the Tucson Citizen in 2005. “That impressed me.”
To hear Budinger further tell it, even as he was competing alongside 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’d circle back to his first love at some point. “Most guys, when they finish a sport, they’re kind of confused, or they’re kind of lost for the next journey,” Budinger said in a 2018 appearance on the Sandcast volleyball podcast. “I was lucky enough to just transition into a different sport immediately and play at the highest level.”
He made it look as if he had been on the beach tour for years. In 2018, he was named the rookie of the year and most improved player of the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP), the biggest and longest-running beach volleyball tour in the US. The following season, he won his first pro title. Ordinarily, you’d expect an athlete switching sports in their late 20s to at least encounter some headwinds along the way. But, among the many extra tall and coordinated athletes who bounce between volleyball and basketball, are a few that are a cut 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 on Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls (the chats they must have had about switching sports!) – but even Buechler only played less than a handful of professional beach volleyball events in his prime.
Before Buechler, there was Keith Erickson – a tall, SoCal kid who helped UCLA to repeat national college basketball titles while representing USA Volleyball in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (in fact, Erickson’s scholarship was split between the basketball and baseball teams). He went on to play 12 NBA seasons, winning a championship with Los Angeles Lakers in 1972. UCLA’s John Wooden, one of the greatest basketball coaches in history, called Erickson the “finest athlete” he’d ever worked with. Budinger, who has thrived despite having different playing partners in each of his first five AVP seasons, seems cut from the same cloth.
After teaming up with six-year pro Miles Evans, Budinger, improbably, has got even better. Still, no one pegged the pair to represent the US at the Olympics. According to Volleyball Magazine, a poll went out at the start of qualifying in January 2023 asking fans which two US teams would make the cut for the Games.
Budinger and Evans split 1% of the vote with other teams. But in time Budinger and Evans would emerge as a formidable pair, rebounding from setbacks in tournaments last year to climb to second in the US rankings, and 13th in the world. After the third-ranked US team of Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb lost in the first round of the final Olympic qualifying tournament, Budinger and Evans were told they were Paris-bound.
As for how far they can go, the American men haven’t won a medal in beach volleyball since Beijing 2008, when the dominant duo of Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser took gold. But Budinger believes he and Evans can get to that level, not least because he takes the game more seriously than the average volleyball player. Asked how his NBA career prepared him for volleyball, Budinger told Walsh Jennings he doesn’t subscribe to the typical lifestyle of a beach volleyball pro “of just going to practice and then going home and chilling and doing whatever at night”.
He added: “[It’s a matter of] really just being like, ‘This is my profession. This is my job.’ You gotta do everything from watching film to making sure your body is right, making sure the recovery is spot on, eating the right foods. I’ve really tried to make that a priority in my life and then also translate it to [Evans].”
The pressure is nothing new to Budinger – not just any Olympic beach volleyball player, after all. He’s the guy with the killer crossover.
