ORIGINS: How Auckland, Miami and Puerto Rico Carved Sam Waardenburg

Sam Waardenburg didn’t ease his way back in.

Four games into his return, the Cairns big man looked every bit himself again on Christmas Eve in Adelaide. Decisive, composed and quietly imposing.

He opened the scoring with a two-hand dunk, exploding to the rim. Moments later, he sized up 36ers superstar Bryce Cotton on a switch, shifted left and calmly fired home a three from range.

A week later on New Year’s Eve against South East Melbourne Phoenix, he produced a season-high 22 points on 8-13 FG shooting, with six rebounds and two blocks.
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After missing the opening 11 rounds following ankle surgery, the reigning Taipans club MVP wasn’t just back on the floor, he was back in command.

His journey to becoming one of the most complete and cerebral big men in the country didn’t begin with a master plan.

The story behind the calm, the craft and the way he sees five-on-five like very few else begins the way a lot of lifelong passions do.

In the stands.
As a kid.
Watching someone else play.

FIRST MEMORY‍

“First ever memory and the reason I got into the game, I was four years old and went to watch my older brother play,” Waardenburg says.

“He only ever played one game of basketball. He scored on the wrong basket and then gave it up. But me sitting in the stands, I was like, ‘Mum, I want to give this a go.’”

From there, any sport he could access, he played, until around 13, when something clicked.

“I’ve played since I was five,” he says. “But when I was around 13, I started to become one of the better players in New Zealand and realised I could make something of this.”

Waardenburg’s path wasn’t the familiar child-prodigy blueprint. Both his parents were teachers. He didn’t grow up in a family tree of hoopers, with a private trainer or a picture-perfect jumper.

“My parents never played, I’m the first person to play sports in my family,” he says.

“My shot still looks pretty ugly. It’s got a side spin when I release it, and that’s just because I taught myself how to shoot when I was younger.”

Basketball wasn’t something handed down.

It was something he chased.

And once the opportunities arrived, he ran at them.

“I had some great coaches,” he says. “My first high school coach at Avondale College was Doe Williams. Because of my height, he threw me straight into the senior team. Competing against bigger, more mature bodies developed me a lot faster than my own age group. I give him so much credit for accelerating my growth.”

He was raw, by his own admission.

“I used to be so gumby, dropping the ball all the time and turning it over,” he says.

That changed when the New Zealand Breakers Academy came calling, where the work started earlier, the bodies got older and the lessons sharpened.

“Breakers Academy was really tough,” he says. “I was 14 or 15 going against 17-year-olds. We were just getting beat down daily by more mature players. Judd Flavell — the current New Zealand national team head coach — was guiding us through it. Those beatdowns were hard. 6am practices. Some days I didn’t want to go in. But it made me so much better.”

His body changed almost as fast as his game.

“I grew seven or eight inches in one year,” he says. “Went from 5ft 10in to 6ft 6in. Then before college, I grew again from 6ft 6in to 6ft 10in.”

The modern dynamic big-man story often starts with guard skills and ends with a late growth spurt.

Waardenburg was the opposite.

He grew first. Learned later.

MIAMI

In 2017, Waardenburg earned a scholarship to the University of Miami, taking his game from Auckland to the heart of the ACC.

American college basketball hit like a wave. Deeper talent, stronger bodies and heavier contact.

“College basketball in the US can be overwhelming,” he says. “There’s such a strong pool of talent. Guys are way more physical. I was super light and skinny when I first got there, about 185 pounds. The first goal was to put on 30 pounds, especially during the six months I sat out my freshman year.”

The physical jump was demanding, but the tactical side never scared him.

“The way we play basketball coming from New Zealand gave me an edge,” he says. “There’s more emphasis on five-on-five strategy. In the US, they have more of a sense of playing as an individual at a really high level, but I always felt comfortable with the strategic side. There was such an emphasis on IQ growing up, that was the biggest benefit of New Zealand basketball.”

That IQ became a signature during Miami’s improbable Elite Eight run.

He still talks about like it happened yesterday.

The Hurricanes weren’t meant to be there. But Waardenburg became the facilitator at the five in a line-up stacked with dangerous guards as Miami took down powerhouse programs and stared down NBA-bound talent without flinching.

They knocked off USC. They stared down Auburn — a program stacked with future NBA talent, including Jabari Smith Jr. and Walker Kessler — and didn’t blink.

Waardenburg remembers the pre-game feeling. Auburn carried itself like the result was a formality. Miami made sure it wasn’t, making history in the process.

In March Madness, there’s no seven-game series to correct a bad night.
Just four quarters.
One stage.
Miami made theirs count.

‍THE BLUEPRINT

Every player has a reference point — someone they watched before they knew how to watch.

For Waardenburg, it started with LeBron James.

He wears number 21 out of admiration for Spurs icon Tim Duncan.

But the player who quietly shaped what he could become, especially as the game evolved, was Kevin Love during his Minnesota Timberwolves years.

“Loved watching Kevin Love while he was in Minnesota,” Waardenburg says. “He came into the league at a time when stretch bigs weren’t really a thing. He was just one of the elite stretch bigs. I tried to base my game off of him a little bit.”

“But it wasn’t until I came to the Taipans and worked with Adam Forde that my ball-handling really developed and everything fell into place.”
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FAR NORTH BOUND

‍After six years at Miami, Waardenburg went undrafted in 2022, earning NBA Summer League opportunities with the Dallas Mavericks and a year later, the Minnesota Timberwolves.

An ankle injury stalled that path, but not his momentum.

He signed with Cairns on a two-year deal soon after and made an immediate impact in his rookie NBL season with one of his personal highlights capped by a New Year’s Eve comeback win against the Adelaide 36ers that has since become Taipans folklore.

By season’s end, he was named the league’s Next Generation Award winner, a marker that his transition to the professional game wasn’t just underway. It was accelerating.

‍CAIRNS GRIND

‍Waardenburg’s last two pre-seasons tell you everything about his mindset.

The first came after a season he felt didn’t meet his standard. He didn’t run from that feeling. He stayed in Cairns and went to work.

“I needed that off-season here,” he says. “I’d come off a season I thought was disappointing for myself. I needed a break from playing games and just hone in on what I could do.”

“Six days a week. On court with coaches for four days. The other days, I’d get it in on my own. At that point in time, that was what I needed. Just embracing that grind mentality, getting in each day and working on my craft.”

It wasn’t glamorous. It was the kind of lonely improvement that only shows itself months later.

It fuelled a career-best season — club MVP, Members’ Choice MVP and Defensive Player of the Year — averaging 14.5 points, 6.4 rebounds, 3.4 assists, a block and nearly a steal per game.

Then came the most recent pre-season and it couldn’t have been more different.

PUERTO RICO

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Joining Indios de Mayagüez in the BSN, where the crowds were chaotic, the games were constant and the list of giants in the league carried real NBA weight — JaVale McGee, DeMarcus Cousins and Hassan Whiteside.

“In my first game, I had two points as an import,” Waardenburg says. “I thought I was on the next flight home.”

But he soon found his groove going on to average 17.2 points, 7.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists on 53.8 per cent from the field.

A 30-point double-double against former Sacramento King and four-time NBA All Star Cousins turned heads well beyond the island.

In Puerto Rico, I found the one or two things I was really good at, straight line drives and pick and pop shooting,” he says. “It’s nothing fancy, but it was just easy basketball and now my confidence in those things is at a maximum.”

He shared that run with two familiar faces — Brisbane Bullets centre Tyrell Harrison and Melbourne United star Milton Doyle — players who might be “opposition” during the season now, but were teammates in the heat of the BSN.

SIDELINES

‍This season, while sidelined early, Waardenburg found another way to grow, by studying someone in his own locker room.

“During this injury, I’ll give a lot of props to Jack McVeigh,” he says. “Watching how he gets his shots, how efficient he is. Coming back from Houston and being around that NBA environment — it’s impressive.”

What stood out wasn’t just skill.
It was control.

“He knows where to get to his spots. He’s always under control. No matter how well someone is guarding him, it doesn’t affect his shot.”

Now healthy again, Waardenburg is applying the same idea to his own game.

Not louder. Not flashier. Just more precise.

That precision isn’t accidental.

Waardenburg is a reader by nature, setting himself a goal of 50 books in 2025.

Then surgery hit and time slowed.

“The first two weeks after surgery, I read about 13 books. I couldn’t do anything else.”

His favourites reflect how he thinks: The Inner Game of Tennis. Man’s Search for Meaning. The Red Rising series.

He’s also a poker player — another pursuit built around patience, reads and not reacting emotionally to the last hand.

Those details matter, because they mirror the on-court Waardenburg.

That curiosity extends academically. Waardenburg graduated from the University of Miami with a bachelor’s degree majoring in geography and a minor in sociology, before completing a master’s degree in sport administration and later pursuing a second master’s degree in liberal studies.
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THE RETURN

Waardenburg has felt connected to Cairns since day one.

“That’s the special thing about the Taipans,” he says. “Being a community-based team, the passion is always there. You feel it everywhere.”

“It’s not just in the stadium and gameday, I go around and I feel the support from people that kind of take you in as family… I doubt that most other NBL teams are like that.”

“The lifestyle up here is chill, suits me a lot better off the court as well.”

It fits the version of Sam who isn’t chasing the loudest room — who’d rather watch film than scroll, read than post on social media and make the right play instead of hunting highlights.

For 11 rounds, he watched from the outside — frustrated, but patient.

Now he’s back.

He’s already felt the crowd rise again.

“You run out and hear the fans screaming,” he says. “You have those moments where you think — this is my life.”

And once again, Sam Waardenburg is exactly where he belongs.