Knowing next to nothing about the Japanese and their culture, former UCLA basketball player J.R. Henderson initially balked when offered a chance to play professionally in the land of the rising sun.
Seven years later, he's a naturalized Japanese citizen.
Henderson's transformation to J.R. Sakuragi, the new name taken by the seven-time Japan Basketball League all-star, was fueled by loyalty to his adopted second homeland, he says, but financial considerations played a part too.
It was a grueling, time-consuming process, says the 6-foot-8 forward from Bakersfield who averaged 9.2 points and 4.2 rebounds as a freshman for coach Jim Harrick's 1995 NCAA championship team at UCLA.
"Eight months of headaches and headaches and headaches," he says from his home in Kariya, southwest of Tokyo, "but I knew it was going to be like that."
Last July, after earning his Japanese citizenship, Sakuragi joined the Japan national team on the eve of the Asia Championship, an Olympic qualifier, but the Japanese still fell short in their bid to qualify for the Beijing Games.
Says Sakuragi, who typically spends about eight months a year in Japan but also owns a home in West Virginia, "I kind of came in too late, and we just couldn't get adjusted fast enough."
But Sakuragi, 31, hopes to keep playing until he's 40, so he'll have other chances to help Japan qualify for its first Olympic berth since 1976.
The former Milton Henderson Jr., Sakuragi averages more than 20 points and 10 rebounds a game for the Aisin Sea Horses of the JBL Super League. He averaged 14.2 points and 6.4 rebounds in four seasons at UCLA, twice earning All-Pacific 10 Conference first-team recognition, and was a second-round pick of the Vancouver Grizzlies in the 1998 NBA draft.
He played only 30 games in the NBA, however, averaging 3.2 points and 1.6 rebounds for the Grizzlies during the lockout-shortened 1999 season.
Two years later, after playing for teams in Las Vegas and France and summer-league teams in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, he signed on to play in Japan. Though apprehensive at first, the unassuming Sakuragi says, "I can pretty much adapt to any situation, as long as bombs aren't going off and stuff like that."
In Japan, he says, he found people not unlike himself.
"The way they are is kind of the way I am," he says. "I just keep to myself and produce, pretty much. That's what's kept me here for so long. I was never in any trouble. People here care more about off the court than on the court."
