It is to be expected that Kevin Durant will attempt to secure his fourth Olympic gold medal with USA Basketball. Chase Budinger, a former NBA player, will be making his Olympic debut in a different sport. Budinger and his partner Miles Evans have achieved seven top-five finishes in nine qualifying competitions this year, including a second-place finish in Paris in the US men's beach volleyball competition. The late surge enabled Budinger, aged 36, and Evans, aged 34, to overtake their fellow Americans, Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb, in the international rankings last month.
In the second-to-last match of the Olympic qualifying season in Poland last week, Budinger and Evans finished fifth, while Brunner and Crabb failed to progress beyond the pool play stage. Brunner and Crabb then suffered a loss in their first qualifying match on Wednesday in the Czech Republic. In order to retain any hope of a place in Paris, they needed to reach the final.
The fact that they have been eliminated from the competition further validates Budinger's decision to quit basketball and take up beach volleyball in 2018. This transition represented a return to a sport that Budinger had previously excelled at as a child growing up in Encinitas, California.
Budinger was a two-sport star at La Costa Canyon High School in San Diego County. He excelled in both basketball and volleyball, being awarded five stars in basketball and being regarded as one of the nation's best spikers in volleyball. He helped La Costa Canyon win three consecutive San Diego Section Division I titles in boys volleyball. Had he chosen to focus on that sport, he would have been able to make his college choice.
Budinger instead opted to concentrate solely on basketball at the university level, thereby eliminating any uncertainty by signing with Arizona, which does not even have a men's volleyball programme. The former California Bay Basketball player was named the Pac-10 freshman of the year in 2007 and two years later was awarded first-team all-conference honours as a junior.
Selected 44th overall by the Houston Rockets in the 2009 NBA Draft, Budinger spent parts of seven seasons in the league. Following his release by the Brooklyn Nets during the 2016 preseason, Budinger concluded his tenure as a professional basketball player in Spain.
The lack of interest from NBA teams was the catalyst for Budinger's return to volleyball. At the age of 30, Budinger believed that her athleticism would enable her to pursue a career in beach volleyball.
Six years and a substantial amount of arduous effort later, she discovered her answer. The pair will travel to Paris with the intention of achievin
