If you asked a young Buru Naivalurua what he would be doing when he reached his college age, basketball player in America would not have been his answer.
Rugby star? Maybe. Soccer player? Perhaps.
A budding star of a Division I college basketball team in Michigan? No way.
So how did we get here? The story of Buru Naivalurua has plenty of twists and turns, and it is fascinating.
To begin, this story almost didn’t even begin.
The youngest of 10 siblings, he is the only child between his parents and says it was a little bit of a surprise that he was born.
“My mom wasn’t expecting anymore, but she and my dad tried. They weren’t expecting anything of it but sure enough,” Naivalurua said.
Buru was born in Sydney, Australia, Bankstown Hospital to be exact. While he considers that home, he was never completely settled in.
“I was in and out of Fiji with my mom,” Naivalurua said. “A lot of my early childhood was moving to Fiji for months at a time, going back and forth with Australia.”
While moving back and forth seems like quite the hassle on its own, there was a hefty traveling party joining Buru and his mom.
“I have nine siblings all up. It’s split between my dad’s kids and my mom’s kids. My dad had four before he had me, and then my mom had five before she had me. So I have siblings on both sides. I only grew up with my mom’s side of the family, and basically grew up with, like all of them for the majority of my life.”
Buru said some of his older siblings on his mom’s side would move away growing up, but never far enough away to where he would still see them regulary.
There is one sibling in particular who can be thanked for introducing basketball to Buru.
“One of my sisters played basketball a lot, and she used to take me down to the park to rebound for her, and she taught me how to shoot a little bit, gave me some basic fundamentals, things like that. That was sort of my introduction to the sport.”
But rebounding at the park wasn’t enough to rip Buru away from his first sporting love, rugby.
“Before my ninth grade year, it was all rugby. Rugby the entire time.”
While, Buru didn’t have a focus on basketball, he started playing recreationally right before high school. It was there that his vision flipped.
“I got lucky at a rec league competition,” Buru said. “I ran into a coach who has helped me every step of my basketball career since then. Then, I started high school and met the high school basketball coach. He was extremely helpful with, like, getting me into the sport competitively. Ever since then, I haven’t looked back.”
Buru said until he met his high school coach, he was still primarily a rugby player. He would only play basketball because it was fun during a day off of school. He played for his high school at the age of 15, which is when he says his official start to competitive basketball was.
He began to excel. Buru started to take his basketball game to a high level, and by the end of his time at school, he started to look at his future.
“I was like, 17 or 18, heading into my final year of high school, where I finally made it up to myself, and I was like, okay, I’m gonna go to the States to play because I wasn’t very sure at first. I was thinking like, oh, maybe I’ll just stay home and play basketball around here,” Buru said.
“But the guy I mentioned before, that helped get me into competitive basketball, he was like, you have to go to the States.”
The coach, DeMarcus Berry, and Buru’s high school coach had done some work to secure an offer from an American school. Buru said he trusted them, and that his recruiting process was not much in terms of deciding where he should go.
“Well, I didn’t have anything other than the JUCO that my coaches had told me about,” Naivalurua said. “COVID was actively going on and he had called me and he was like, hey, like, there’s a school, a junior college, in Kansas.”
Buru couldn’t do much visiting around during a COVID lockdown in Australia, so the JUCO, Garden City Community College, hopped on a zoom call and offered Buru a scholarship.
He accepted, and began getting ready to move to America to embark on the biggest move of his life. There was only one problem, he wasn’t allowed to move.
Australia was on complete lockdown, and Buru needed a visa interview so he could leave, but the visa interviews were shut down.
“Usually, when you request these visa interviews, they suggest you do it three, four months in advance,” Buru said. With COVID going on, all of the embassies were shut down, and you could only get emergency interviews. So you’d have to request an emergency interview, like every single day, which is what I was doing, and I couldn’t get one,” he continued. “Like every day I’d log in and try.”
Eventually, America began to open up, and Garden City began to practice. This led to the coaches wondering what the deal was with Buru.
“The coach was like, what’s going on? I had to explain to them basically, ‘well, the entire country is basically shutting down. I can’t do anything about this.’”
Then came panic for Buru.
“Then they were talking about, like, potentially pulling my scholarship because I couldn’t be there.”
Luckily, that didn’t happen. Buru’s camp convinced Garden City that once he gets there it will be worth it. Buru would miss the first half of the year, but would be able to join the team and practice with them during the second semester, and he made that promise happen just in time.
“I think I got the scholarship offer in June and I didn’t actually end up getting a visa interview set up until October, and that interview wasn’t until late December, and I had already booked the flight to get there for January.”
It all worked out, and Buru set off to Kansas, where he immediately had second thoughts.
“When I first got there, my first thought was, like, what have I just gotten myself into? It was a small country town in the middle of nowhere.”
At the start of the trip it was awesome. I landed in LA, everything’s cool, you know. It’s LA,” Buru laughed. “It’s a big place, big airport, similar to home. Then I go to Dallas, Fort Worth, the same thing.”
“But then I started getting to the back of the airport, and no one else was back there. The whole flight was just dark, no lights anywhere. When we finally landed, it was just on tarmac and the smallest airport I have ever seen. I remember thinking, ‘What have I done?’”
Although the initial impression was rough, Buru began to settle in. He started going to class, and practicing. Buru says that building relationships is important to him and he was able to find some important relationships in the middle of nowhere.
“I’m still close to some of the professors from there, I met my girlfriend there. I would do it all again.”
Buru turned in a very successful year at Garden City, and it was time to make the next jump in America. Division I basketball was ready for Buru, and he had plenty of offers.
He took visits to schools like FIU and Rhode Island, even had offers from power conference schools. But he settled on Oakland, for a few reasons
“Part of the reason I came here is Coach Berry actually grew up in Detroit, so he knew about Oakland. He knew some guys who went here, he lived around here, and he was like,’ if you do go here, there’s a bunch of resources I have around that can help you.and stuff like that.”
Another reason? The relationships that were important to him at Garden City, he felt at Oakland.
“On my visit, it was the first visit where it seemed like the team actually got along with each other, like they were actually friends.”
“Trey (Townsend) was my host. We hung out with Chris (Conway), Osei (Price) and Coop (Craggs). It was just my kind of environment. It seemed like everyone was for each other.”
While Buru said he didn’t care too much about being at a big name school, his first year at Oakland certainly brought big time environments.
“I knew that American people took college schools very seriously,” Buru said. “You see it on TV, like, even if you didn’t follow very closely you’d see the Big 10 championship game, Pac 12, or whatever. It was always packed and the football games are crazy. You know, Alabama and LSU, Death Valley, all these places.”
“I remember stepping to the free throw line at Illinois and thinking ‘Don’t airball’.” I missed both free throws and the crowd went crazy because they won free chicken nuggets.”
Buru calls that his introduction to American college basketball. And after another roadblock where he missed over a month of preseason practice and the first game, he was ready to go.
He became an important piece to the championship team that Oakland had. He says the NCAA Tournament, although he was not one who grew up dreaming of playing in it, was the craziest thing he’s ever been a part of.
“I didn’t play 40 minutes a game or anything in those tournament games, but it was the most fun I have ever had.” said Naivalurua. “Just being a part of that group was very very special.”
Now, Buru may play 40 minutes in a game, as he has turned himself into a go-to player for the Golden Grizzlies. He is the leading rebounder, and is averaging well over 10 points a game.
“The biggest difference for me is going from the guy who asks all the questions to having to have all the answers to the questions from the new guys. I think me, Isaiah and DQ have done a pretty good job so far, especially with how our defense has improved so fast.”
Buru credits the freedom that coach Greg Kampe has given him this year to his rise in numbers, and says that his confidence is sky high.
“Some struggles I faced last year I think came from me being in a role I had never been in before. This year I knew I had to be able to score with my back to the basket, I knew I had to defend in the zone, and things have just come together,” Buru said.
While Buru hones in his skills on the court and as a leader, he is all about winning at Oakland, but has goals for the future.
“The ultimate goal, I think, for anyone playing college basketball, regardless of whether or not you actually think you can make it, is going to the NBA. That’s the peak of basketball in the world. Everybody, at some point, wants to be able to play in the NBA. After I’m done with college basketball, I’ll give it about as good a go as I can.”
And just like his recruitment to Oakland, he has an interesting view of professional basketball as well.
“Obviously, playing overseas is something I do want to do. I think basketball is a good avenue to see parts of the world that you probably won’t ever see.As much as it is business, it’s kind of like a free trip to go and experience things you wouldn’t otherwise get to.
Buru says that the Fiji national team has expressed interest in him representing them, and he plans to end his worldwide journey back where it all started,
“When I’m heading towards the end of my career, I do want to play at home. I probably, at that point, wouldn’t have spent a lot of time at home and I would like to play in front of my friends and family, because I do miss it. I miss home a lot,” Naivalurua said.
The man who has called many places home, would like to finish in his native land. For now, though, he is very happy to call Oakland home, and Oakland should be very happy Buru’s worldwide tour has taken a stop in Rochester.
