The drastic continuity of KC Rivers is going to go down the drain due to the problem with his Cotonou passport. A setback that has changed the plans of Real Madrid, who is negotiating the signing of Jeffery Taylor, a former NBA player who would not count as a non-EU player because he was born in Sweden (Norrköping, May 23, 1989), where his father played and had previously had a career in the NBA for five years (1982-1987) split between the Houston Rockets and the Detroit Pistons.
At first, Taylor is a more physical player with a more defensive profile compared to Rivers, who, however, performed perfectly when he had to be important in crucial moments of last season and managed to fit into a clearly secondary role in Real Madrid's backcourt rotation. For this reason, and because Taylor does not have the same shooting ability and experience in Europe as his predecessor, it is difficult to evaluate Taylor's contribution compared to the smaller but consistent contribution that Real Madrid seemed to cover with Rivers' continuity.
Taylor played in the Eurobasket 2013 with Sweden. And he shone for volume in an obviously smaller team: 18 points and 11.5 rebounds per game. Also with less than 27% in three-pointers and 4.3 turnovers compared to just 1.4 assists. Now he was looking for a destination, and he was close to signing with Maccabi, because the Charlotte Hornets did not make him a qualifying offer that would have made him a restricted free agent. Free to choose his destination and without a spot in the NBA when the rosters of almost all franchises are already set, he has decided to head to Europe.
His NBA career has not been what was expected when he made a name for himself at Vanderbilt University as a physically strong wing player with a lot of defensive intensity. It was said that he could defend "any player who was not a center" and maybe he lacked a better outside shot to fit into the highly valued role of "3 and D" player in the current NBA (a player who contributes three-pointers and defense). In his fourth and final year at college, he averaged 16.1 points and 5.6 rebounds and raised his three-point percentage to 42% after only 22% in his first season. Charlotte Bobcats selected him with the 31st pick in the 2012 draft and he has spent his three years in the league there (Bobcats, then Hornets).
His NBA averages were 6.1 points and 2 rebounds in just 19.4 minutes per game: 41% shooting from the field, 31% from three-point range. In the 2013-14 season, he had a couple of 20-point games, his career high in a trajectory marked by two events: a serious Achilles tendon injury in December 2013 and a domestic violence case that resulted in a 24-game suspension and a bad reputation at a time when the American sports world was particularly sensitive to the issue after the scandal of the assault on his fiancée by Ray Rice, an NFL player.
The incidents took place in September 2014. In October, he pleaded guilty and in November, the NBA sanctioned him: 24 games (he had already served eleven before the official announcement) and around 200,000 dollars of his salary (just over 915,000). The charges were for "domestic violence and malicious destruction of property". As he admitted to the judge, after a night of heavy alcohol consumption, he argued with his partner in a hotel in East Lansing and violently threw her against a wall. When he was arrested, he was "belligerent and uncooperative" with the police.
After the suspension, he went to the D-League and had little impact on the Hornets, who gave him very little prominence even when Lance Stephenson had stalled as their star signing and injuries were piling up in the team's rotation. Some in the local press believed that the extra-sporting scandal was still lingering, but in any case, Taylor's NBA career has languished, for now, definitively.