Chase Budinger has played for four teams in the North American Championship and competes at the Games in tandem with Miles Evans; together they are looking for a medal that hasn’t come since 2008
Chase Budinger reached the Paris 2024 Olympic Games as a beach volleyball athlete for the United States. The duo of Miles Evanshowever, has a past, albeit discreet, in basketball. He spent seven years in the NBA.
This Tuesday, the 30th, Budinger and Evans will compete in the second round against Dutchmen Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot at the Paris Olympic Games. The North Americans debuted with a 2-0 victory over Frenchmen Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat.
Budiger excelled especially at the high school and college levels. In 2006, at the age of 18, he was elected MVP of the High School All-American Basketball, along with Kevin Durant, NBA star and three-time Olympic champion (London-2012, Rio-2016 and Tokyo-2020). While the Phoenix Suns player is part of the Dream Team and is looking for his fourth gold in Paris, Budinger is already on another.
Since 2018, when he was 29 years old, he has become the key to beach volleyball. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he has done better in the second sport, since he was named rookie of the year by the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP), the largest and oldest circuit in the United States. The following year, he won his first title.
Paired with Evans, Budinger has climbed onto the podium in three stages of the Beach Volleyball World Tour 2023 (one win and two runners-up). It was the basis of the two’s work that secured a place in Paris, already in 2024. As if it were not coincidental enough, their coach is the Brazilian Dan Waineraich, from Rio who participated in the edition of The Summer Farma program derived from the reality show Record TV.
Chase Budinger’s Basketball Past
Still in his first year in college, with the Arizona Wildcats, Budinger declared for the NBA draft. He backtracked on his decision and remained in college. On his second try, in 2009, he was chosen by the Detroit Pistons, for whom he did not even play.
The franchise involved him in a trade with the Houston Rockets. The Texan team achieved the best performance in the NBA, with a personal best of 35 points in a single game, against the Minnesota Timberwolves. In 2012 he went to the Minneapolis team. From that moment on, increasingly weak passages through the US franchises followed.
Between 2015 and 2016, he spent time with the Indiana Pacers and the Phoenix Suns. Last year, he left the United States for Spain, where he played in the Euroleague with Baskonia. Although without glory, he is estimated to have earned $18 million (R$101.4 million, at current prices), in just the four North American clubs.
“(Beach volleyball) is a lifestyle. You go to the beach every day. It makes training easier. You like to spend a few hours sunbathing and playing volleyball, listening to some music and working out,” Budinger said of what motivated him to do it. change sports. The taste for the coast is typical of the California athlete.
“I miss basketball, it was a really big part of my life for a long time. But I put that aside and started a new chapter,” she explained in an interview with three-time Olympic beach volleyball champion Kerri Walsh Jenning. , at Yahoo Sports from the United States.
In his modest career, the main skills for which he was recognized were kicking and long-distance jumping. This is still used by Budinger in the sand.
Chase Budinger wasn’t the first to swap basketball for beach volleyball
Keith Erickson is one of the examples that precede Budinger. With a career in the NBA throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Erickson was the 1972 NBA champion, with the Los Angeles Lakers. During his professional career, he was a member of the United States volleyball team that competed in the 1964 Tokyo Games. While at the University of California, he was also a member of the baseball team.
After him, Jud Buechler She won three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s. Before that, she played volleyball at the college level and in some professional matches.
U.S. beach volleyball hasn’t won a men’s medal since Beijing 2008, when Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser won gold. Budinger believes partnering with Evans can break that taboo.
Source: Terra
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