Ex-hooper Budinger wins Olympic volleyball debut
PARIS — Chase Budinger has never forgotten how badly he played in his first NBA game. He’ll have only good memories from his Olympic debut.
The former Arizona and professional basketball player and his partner, Miles Evans, beat host France in straight sets on Monday to coast through their opening match of the Paris beach volleyball tournament.
“I really tried to use my basketball experience of playing in front of big crowds to be composed the whole time,” Budinger said after a 21-14, 21-11 victory. “But it definitely was not like that inside.”
Budinger spent seven years in the NBA, mostly as a bench player for the Rockets and Timberwolves, before turning to beach volleyball to fulfill an Olympic dream. His first NBA game, he still remembers, “I played awful.”
“On the bus ride over here, I was telling Miles about my first basketball game, of how nervous I was and how the nerves really got to me,” Budinger said. “I was 0-for-2 [from 3-point range], had two turnovers and one of my shots I had was an air ball. So the nerves affected my gameplay.”
At the Eiffel Tower Stadium on Monday the jitters didn’t get to him — even against a French team that had won the past three matchups on the international tour.
“It took me six years. It took me a long time to finally achieve this goal and I am here competing at the Olympics,” Budinger said. “And there is no better feeling.”
Budinger and Evans scored the first three points and never trailed in the first set. In the second, France did eke out a 3-1 lead before the Americans won the next three points and finished the match in just 32 minutes.
“It’s one of the best starts we could imagine,” Evans said. “I had all these bad scenarios in my head going into this match. I am super thankful we were able to overcome that.”
Unlike his NBA debut against the Portland Trail Blazers back in 2009, Budinger said: “I felt like out here, I was able to get a couple of points early. That helped relieve some of that stress, those nerves and allowed me to play my game more without it affecting me as much.”
In other notable beach action on Monday, Americans Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth beat Tokyo silver medalist Taliqua Clancy of Australia and her new partner, Mariafe Artacho del Solar, in straight sets to improve to 2-0 in Paris.
France swept Rio gold medalist Laura Ludwig of Germany and her new partner, Louisa Lippmann. Qatar, the bronze medalist in Tokyo on the men’s side, beat top-ranked Sweden 2-1 to improve to 2-0 in pool play.
