The Official Site of Jordan Farmar

Tue, Feb 10th 2009, 10:40

Jordan's Playboy.com Blog - Five on 5: Week 13

We’ve come home to put our feet in the sand again, after a great six-game (6-0) road trip. We capped it off beating the best two teams in the East back-to-back. First, we snapped a 12-game Boston win streak and then we stopped Cleveland’s 23-game unbeaten home streak. That Boston contest was the most-watched NBA game on cable this season with about 4.3 million viewers on TNT. We returned home with an 18-5 road record.

We had to go through different time zones and through different types of cities, from Memphis to Toronto, so the key is to be adaptable and versatile. Which is pretty much the same as my personal style — I’d call it versatile, lol! I can go business and professional with a sharp suit and tie, or change it up to urban, wearing some hip-hop clothes, a little baggier, or maybe — I wouldn’t say preppy — slim jeans and a tight shirt. So I try to pull off a little bit of everything.

I feel I had my own style even back in college. I get my style background from my grandmother, Adella, who was a fashion director and costumer for twenty years, working on network TV shows like Good Times, 227, and Married With Children. When I was little, I picked up things from her about the rules and tips on how to style it up. In her position, coordinating clothing, she was constantly around what was hip and cool. She had a very keen sense of style.

A few years ago, the term metrosexual came out, describing young men with high incomes, living and working in the city. People said soccer superstar David Beckham was the poster boy for the metrosexual trend. For me, the term is about people who have good style and take care of themselves, who are up on the times, guys who maybe get manicures, stay with the fresh haircut all the time, things like that. The description may or may not fit you, it all depends on how comfortable you are with yourself. For me, I feel comfortable with saying my style is versatile. BTW, David is a big Lakers fan and he’s got a lot of style, whatever you want to call it. He’s playing soccer in Milan now, one of the fashion capitals of the world.

UCLA just beat USC for the second time this season. The atmosphere inside UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion can get electric with 12,000 plus fans. EA Sports just ranked Pauley as one of the 15 most difficult places to play college basketball for opposing teams. In the most recent match-up, the Bruins held a commanding 44-21 halftime lead over the Trojans. And Bruins football coach Rick Neuheisel said on the mike at halftime: “I don’t know about you, but I like that halftime score. Get used to that in every sport.”

While the two schools’ rivalry is across the board in all sports, the basketball rivalry is probably one of the top-5 in all of college sports. It ranks up there with North Carolina-Duke in basketball, Florida-Florida State in football. The challenge is tough at UCLA because all the teams in the various sports are competitive programs nationally. And with USC, there’s the added factor of them being cross-town, and UCLA wants to get the glory in every sport. Without a professional football team in LA, it’s the Lakers, then the Clippers, followed by USC football and UCLA basketball on the same level. If you trump your rival for the year, you run the city for the time being.

Like I said earlier, we stopped a big Boston win-streak for a second time this season — 19 the first time, and 12 last week. The game on TNT last Thursday had a playoff atmosphere, with NBA finals intensity. The competition was high, there was some talking, technical fouls, more jawing and no backing down, some great plays and it was just a lot of fun to be part of. Of course, it was first time back for us after Game 6 of the Finals last year when Boston put it to us by 39 points in the series clincher. Before our season opener this season, I’d spoken for the team, saying that “we left off on the wrong foot last year” and that we had “a lot of work to do.”

So it was so great to come out of that cauldron with a win over the champions, especially after just losing our big man Drew, who was really coming into his own. We thought he would make a big difference in our match-up with Boston — you remember, he missed the playoffs last year. But having played so well to start the road trip we wanted to finish it off, and we went into Boston and then Cleveland and got big wins, even without Drew. But every game is a statement game if you think about it because you never know how it will come down at the end of the season — home court advantage may be on the line. Having gone 2-0 against both of them, we now have the tiebreaker for home-court if we’re tied with the Celtics or Cavs at the end of season.

As a Lakers’ player rep, I’ll be attending the All-Star game, where Phil Jackson will be coaching and my teammates Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol will be playing. Enjoy the All-Star festivities and check in next week for my new dish

— JFarm.