The two co-MVPs of the 2006 McDonald's All-American Men's Game will head to Paris this summer.
Of course, Kevin Durant will be trying to win his fourth Olympic gold medal with the U.S. basketball team, and former NBA player Chase Budinger will be making his Olympic debut in a different sport.
Budinger and partner Miles Evans earned the second and final spot in the U.S. men's beach volleyball tournament in Paris after seven top-five finishes in nine qualifying matches this year. A late surge helped the 36-year-old Budinger and Evans, 34, overtake fellow Americans Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb in the international rankings last month.
Budinger and Evans finished fifth while Brunner and Crabb failed to get out of their pool in the penultimate tournament of the Olympic qualifying season last week in Poland. Then Brunner and Crabb lost their opening qualifying match in the Czech Republic on Wednesday but needed to at least reach the final to guarantee themselves a place in Paris.
Competing in the Olympics further validates Budinger's decision to retire from basketball in 2018 to switch to beach volleyball, a move that marked a return to the sport she loved most as a child, growing up in Encinitas, California.
Budinger was a two-sport star at La Costa Canyon High School in San Diego County, a five-star small forward in basketball and one of the nation's best outside hitters in volleyball. He helped La Costa Canyon win three straight San Diego Regional Division I boys volleyball titles and would have had free reign to choose a college if he had focused on sports.
Budinger ended all speculation by choosing to focus solely on basketball in college, signing with the University of Arizona, a school that doesn't even have a men's volleyball program. A former California Mr. Basketball, Budinger was the Pac-10's Freshman of the Year in 2007 and was named first-team all-conference as a junior two years later.
Budinger was selected 44th overall by the Houston Rockets in the 2009 NBA Draft and spent seven seasons in the league. After the Brooklyn Nets waived him during the 2016 preseason, Budinger played his final season as a professional basketball player in Spain.
The lack of interest from NBA teams prompted Budinger to return to volleyball. At the time, she was 30 years old and felt she still had the athletic ability to see how far she could take beach volleyball.
After six years and a lot of hard work, he has the answer, and he and Evans head to Paris hoping to pull off another surprise and win an Olympic medal.
