Chase Budinger is used to playing in front of packed arenas. He did it for seven years in the NBA. But Monday, on the bus ride to his Olympic beach volleyball debut, he was managing rookie nerves all over again.

“I was trying to explain how we are going to breathe and how we are going to look at each other, use each other to slow the game down, calm ourselves, calm the nerves as much as possible,” Budinger said.

The “we” was Budinger and his playing partner, Miles Evans, but perhaps mainly Budinger.

As he recalled after the duo’s straight-sets win over France’s Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, he was hoping for an experience vastly different from his first time out in the NBA.

“I played awful,” he said of his debut for the Houston Rockets in Oct. 2009. “I was 0-2 (from three), had two turnovers, and one of my shots I had was an airball.”

To be fair, he ended up with six points that night. But, yeah, the rest is true.

Nearly 15 years later, Budinger and Evans had much different luck in their first Olympic match. They got a few quick points thanks to early mistakes by France, and then the duo really got rolling.

Budinger pivoted from basketball to beach volleyball back in 2018 when he joined the AVP Tour. But for a lot of NBA fans, Monday’s match was their first realization that Budinger had gone pro in another sport – or that he ever played another sport at all.

Indeed, Budinger grew up playing basketball and volleyball (indoor and beach), and was a high school All-American in both sports. He chose basketball when he went to play at the University of Arizona, but as he's shared in interviews over the years, he always planned to return to the sand. He knew that the NBA would age his body, that his joints would eventually crave the forgiving beach over the hard court. 

When he finally got there, he'd already set his goal.

"My mindset coming into beach volleyball was to make the Olympics," he told Erin Maher of NBC Olympics in June. "I love to dream big. I love to have high goals and why not have the highest goal that you can in beach volleyball?"

Budinger's big dream got off to a sterling start on Monday. His playing partner, Evans, called it one of the best starts they could have imagined, and all underneath the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

"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."

Chase Budinger and Miles Evans return to Eiffel Tower Stadium on Tuesday to face Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot of the Netherlands at 2 p.m. ET.