It was an atypically warm November night even for Los Angeles,
but Jordan Farmar preferred to remain indoors.
Nestled in front of the television in his room, UCLA’s
heralded freshman point guard immersed himself in a tape of
Monday’s Wake Forest-George Washington game, lowering his
eyes only once every few minutes to fast forward through the
commercials.
Farmar’s extensive library of game film includes all the
great point guards ““ Stockton, Kidd and Magic ““ but on
this night it was Wake Forest’s Chris Paul who caught his
attention.
“I was looking at his tendencies, his mannerisms, and how
he interacts with his teammates and coaches ““ all of the
little things that make him the leader that he is,” said
Farmar, who watched the game a second time later that night.
“Leadership qualities can be learned, and I can learn a lot
from watching other guys.”
It will take every ounce of knowledge that Farmar has absorbed
over the past 17 years for him to accomplish the task that is
before him.
The 6-foot-2 freshman, who has been christened the savior of
UCLA basketball since he signed last fall, will be responsible for
leading the Bruins back to respectability this year, beginning
Saturday night against Chicago State.
“He’s ready to run the team,” UCLA coach Ben
Howland said. “He’s got born leadership qualities,
he’s an outstanding competitor, and he has a very good feel
for the game. He’s going to make some mistakes, but for the
most part he’s going to be fine.”
Billed as the quintessential floor general coming out of Taft
High School in Woodland Hills, Farmar considers himself a natural
born leader, but he may be selling himself short. Though the former
McDonald’s All-American clearly possesses innate leadership
qualities, it’s his competitiveness and his work ethic that
have convinced the UCLA coaches he can lead the program out of the
doldrums.
“That’s my goal,” Farmar said. “I want
to be the man. I want to be the leader of this program.”
Farmar, who will start at point guard for the Bruins in his
first collegiate game Saturday night, breaks down game film almost
every evening after practice. He made sure to arrive early to
preseason conditioning at UCLA every day this summer, and has added
17 pounds of muscle over the offseason.
In high school, Farmar was also a hard worker. A classic gym
rat, he stayed after practice each day until he had made 500 jump
shots, recording each of them in a notebook that he brought to
school every day.
“I’m married with two kids, and I told him I was
going to have to get divorced because I was spending so much time
with him,” Taft coach Derrick Taylor said. “I had to
give him a key to the gym. He was that driven.”
Farmar’s intensity and work ethic clashed with former UCLA
coach Steve Lavin’s easygoing charm, so the prep phenom
didn’t consider attending his hometown school until the
Bruins hired a new coach in April of 2003.
Upon receiving a phone call from UCLA to tell him that Howland
was about to be hired, Farmar began to reconsider. Howland’s
history of orchestrating quick turnarounds at Pittsburgh and
Northern Arizona appealed to him, as did the challenge of reviving
the once-proud program.
“When you have a challenge in front of you, it gives you
something to strive for,” said Farmar, who had narrowed his
list of schools to UCLA and Florida before making a decision.
“That’s what I do for myself. I create challenges every
day, and it keeps me going.”
It almost seems as if Farmar has been nurtured to face the
challenge of leading the UCLA basketball program since
childhood.
He is the product of a bi-racial marriage. His mother, Mindy
Kolani, is Jewish, and his biological father, Damon Farmar, is
black.
A career minor league outfielder, his father never stuck with
one franchise, so the family moved around a lot when Farmar was a
baby. The frequent moves finally were too great a strain on his
parents’ relationship, and they separated when he was two
years old. That meant Farmar often had to fly across the country by
himself to visit Damon while he was playing baseball.
“Jordan had to grow up faster than most kids did,”
his father said. “He had to deal with some issues that were
beyond his level of maturity, but I was raised to have confidence
in myself and he was too.”
Because of his father’s baseball connections, Farmar spent
hours in major league clubhouses and locker rooms, and witnessed
firsthand the level of commitment it takes to succeed as a
professional athlete. Damon’s inability to break into the
Major Leagues also taught him that nothing in sports is
guaranteed.
“Most people have said that my dad was better than a lot
of the guys in the majors, but it didn’t work out,”
Farmar said. “I’m trying to learn from that. I know
that I can never stop working, and that I have to really stand
out.”
But in high school, Farmar’s competitive drive would
occasionally be his downfall. He became so focused on winning a
city championship his senior year at Taft that he could not
understand why his teammates did not match his intensity.
Farmar lashed out at them during a particularly galling
midseason stretch, alienating most of them in the process.
“He was motivating his teammates in a way that
wasn’t conducive at all,” his father said.
“People perceived his intensity as negativity.”
Damon Farmar talked to his son about altering his style of
leadership, and the point guard obliged.
“Jordan met with the team, and explained why he was
pushing them so hard,” Taylor said. “Once they stopped
fighting it, we made a run, and the season took off.”
Taft’s season culminated in a city championship, the first
ever by a team from the Valley. Farmar, already somewhat of a cult
hero in the area, averaged 27 points per game as a senior, and was
named to the McDonald’s All-American team.
As impressive as Farmar’s season-long performance,
however, was the level of support he received from UCLA fans. Some
six months before Farmar took his first collegiate class, dozens of
Bruin students, fans and alumni flocked to his games.
All of Taft’s pre-sale tickets were sold by noon on game
days, and fans started lining up more than three hours before game
time to get into the school’s gym.
“It was special,” Farmar said. “I
couldn’t have asked for a better senior year than
that.”
Farmar returned the favor, sitting courtside with Arron Afflalo,
Josh Shipp and Lorenzo Mata, the other members of UCLA’s
heralded recruiting class for almost every Bruin home game last
year. He saw firsthand a team that was short on confidence, short
on outside shooting, and more than anything short on
leadership.
“It was tough for me to watch, and not be a part of
it,” Farmar said. “But now I’m here.”
And that has already made a huge difference.
Last season Howland complained that little-used senior Jon
Crispin was the Bruins’ most vocal leader. This year, with
Farmar in the fold, that hasn’t been an issue.
Farmar, who probably would have been UCLA’s starting point
guard even if three-year starter Cedric Bozeman had not suffered a
season-ending knee injury earlier this month, is determined to be
UCLA’s floor general.
Though he admits it is harder for the Bruin upperclassmen to
accept a freshman as their leader, Farmar thinks they’ll come
around.
“Being a senior and an All-American in high school, my
teammates looked up to me,” Farmar said. “They asked me
for autographs. Now I’m just another player on the team. But
it’s not like my teammates are shunning me. They know
I’m going to be the leader of this team.”
That much is clear every time he shows up for extra
conditioning, every time he hustles back on defense, every time he
stays home at night to break down game film.
Farmar’s message is simple: He will lead.
Everyone else should enjoy the ride.