AVP Chicago Open: The shove, the winners, the shoes, the league ahead

Call it “The Shove Seen Round the World Wide Web.”

Plenty of other highlight-reel moments and compelling storylines were present as the AVP concluded the traditional “bracket” phase of its 2024 season with the third Heritage Series event in Chicago over the Labor Day Weekend.

But social media exploded on Saturday, Day 2, when USA Olympian Chase Budinger and the AVP’s resident “bad boy,” Trevor Crabb, engaged in an on-court exchange of barbs that culminated with Chase giving Trevor a hard shove that sent him tumbling to the sand.

An up-close-and-personal video clip quickly hit the Internet and instantly became THE hot topic for beach-volleyball die-hards and even casual fans who might have wondered, “Is this the AVP or the WWE? Didn’t Budinger used to play in the NBA?”

(Click here to see the video of the shove)

While such physicality certainly was not in keeping with volleyball’s standing as a zero-contact “etiquette” sport, a heated rivalry with verifiable bad blood between two of the best teams on its men’s side certainly does hurt the AVP as it seeks to capture the critical casual eyeballs needed to stoke interest in the inaugural AVP League series that kicks off in two weeks in Los Angeles.

The antipathy has bubbled for a while as Budinger (who played in the NBA for four teams from 2009 through 2015) and partner Miles Evans leapfrogged Crabb and Theo Brunner at the 11th hour of the lengthy Olympic qualifying cycle to earn the United States’ second berth in the recent Paris Games.

When Crabb and Brunner won the iconic Manhattan Beach Open, the “Wimbledon” of American beach volleyball and the first AVP event after Paris, in between dropping multiple unfiltered F-bombs on a live national TV broadcast in the postmatch interview, Trevor said that he and Theo should have represented the U.S. in the Olympics. Fighting words, evidently.

The situation boiled over early in a winners-bracket tilt, described as a “grudge match” on the AVP Bally Live stream by analyst Rich Lambourne. On a “Chamber of Commerce” Saturday afternoon in front of a packed crowd on Stadium Court at Chicago’s Oak Street Beach, chirping and pointing aplenty had transpired. It came to a head when Trevor, as the impromptu blocker, rejected a spike attempt in transition by Budinger straight down to the sand.

Crabb arguably was overly effusive in his celebration. He…