Jordan Farmar Taking Massive Pay Cut to Return to LA Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers have announced their acquisition of Jordan Farmar, who is taking a rather sizable pay cut in order to hook back up with his old squad.

Farmar was set to make anywhere between $5 million and $10 million over the remainder of his contract with Anadolu Efes.

He talked about what he had to give up following the Lakers' announcement:

"

I was fortunate enough to go away and make some money to set my family up and be comfortable this decision wasn't really financial. Barring major injury, I'm still 26 years old. I feel like I have a long time to play basketball.

I just really wanted to make a sacrifice to be here. Not everyone is able to call the Lakers up and they take you. I thought it was important to do my part to make that happen.  If that was sacrificing some dollars today, it was worth it for me.

"

It's obvious that he wanted to play in Los Angeles, and he talks about Los Angeles as if he never left town:

Farmar, a Los Angeles native, last played for the Lakers back in 2010, when the team won its second NBA championship in as many years.

He averaged 6.9 points and 2.1 assists in four seasons with the Lakers prior to signing as a free agent with the New Jersey Nets.

After spending last season in Turkey with Anadolu Efes, Farmar expressed his excitement to be back with the Lakers:

It seems obvious what's going on here: Los Angeles is rebuilding the last team that brought home an NBA championship. 

Now that they've added Farmar, the Lakers have been linked to Lamar Odom and even seem to be looking at Sasha Vujacic.

Take those three along with Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, and you've got a good portion of the 2010 Lakers already in tow.

The rest of the old 2010 class is being replaced by younger versions, as Nick Young becomes the new Shannon Brown, Wesley Johnson is now Metta World Peace 2.0 (or possibly -2.0), and Robert Sacre turns into Adam Morrison, D.J. Mbenga and Luke Walton all rolled into one.

In this scenario, I suppose that makes Chris Kaman the older, fairer-skinned Andrew Bynum, while 39-year-old Steve Nash is likely an improvement over then-35-year-old Derek Fisher.

Toss Mike D'Antoni a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to peruse and Los Angeles has itself the 2013-14 NBA championship in waiting.

Of course, for this to make sense, you've got to ignore the fact that Bryant is hobbling on a surgically repaired Achilles tendon, Gasol missed 33 games last season, and everybody involved will be four years older by the end of the year.