A Tale of Two Taylors

Feb. 20, 2011

Jeffery Taylor was born to be an Eagle. And not even a distance of greater than 5,000 miles could keep him out of Hobbs High School’s No. 44 jersey.

Jeffery grew up in Norrkoping, a city off the Baltic Sea in southeastern Sweden. Following a career in the NBA, Jeffery’s father, Jeff Sr., moved to Sweden to continue his professional basketball career and eventually settled down in Norrkoping with Jeffery’s mother, Pia.

Growing up the oldest son of a professional basketball player, Jeffery was on the court at a young age, and his inherited skill and athleticism quickly showed themselves. Before his junior year of high school, the Taylors decided that Jeffery would move to the United States and attend Jeff Sr.’s alma mater, Hobbs High School in New Mexico.

Hobbs, N.M., is a city of approximately 30,000 located 100 miles southwest of Lubbock, Texas, where basketball is king. The Hobbs High School Eagles have won a New Mexico-record 16 state championships. And for the past 40 years nearly every step of the journey has included a member of the Taylor family, most of whom wore Hobbs’ No. 44 with distinction.

Jeff Sr. once scored 40 points during a 176-49 rout of nearby rival Roswell. Jeffery’s uncle Vince, who is an assistant coach for the Eagles, won a pair of state championships in 1980 and 1981. Both would go on to star at nearby Texas Tech University.

Three other of Jeff Sr.’s brothers–Johnny, Dennis and Henry–also were heroes at Hobbs. Even Jeffery’s cousin, Chris Dunn, wore No. 44 at Hobbs while winning three state titles before being recruited to the University of Arizona.

So when Jeffery arrived in Hobbs in the summer of 2006, his family’s reputation preceded him.

Jeffery left his immediate family in Sweden to move to New Mexico, where he would live with Jeff Sr.’s mother. Jeffery says his transition to the United States was “rough.” While adjusting to life and making friends at a new school as a high school junior, Jeffery also had to get used to speaking a different language.

“Before I came to the U.S., I probably had spoken English about 10 times in my life,” Jeffery said. “I could understand English perfectly, I just never spoke it. My dad would always speak English to me, and I would always answer in Swedish.”

“For the first few weeks, he called his mother every night,” Jeff Sr. said. “He didn’t have friends like he had here [in Sweden]. It wasn’t exactly a smooth transition, but after the first month everybody got to know him and it was okay after that.”

Living with his grandmother did make the transition easier. A resident of Hobbs for more than 40 years, she was a constant supportive presence in his new life.

“She’s a very strong person and she loves basketball, as do most of the people who live in Hobbs,” Jeff Sr. said of his mother. “She still goes to all the games and she watches basketball on TV.”

When basketball season came around, things got tough again. Jeff Sr.’s brother Vince made sure that Jeffery worked hard to reach his full potential.

“I’m not so sure if Vince wouldn’t have been there that Jeffery would have gone to Hobbs,” Jeff Sr. said. “Vince took over the role of Jeffery’s mentor and his disciplinarian. Jeffery may have thought Vince was pretty tough on him, but he learned that Vince expected a whole lot out of him from the very beginning, and that’s exactly the way I wanted it to be.”

“It made you tougher,” Jeffery said. “It prepared you really well for college, and life in general. You’re gonna have bad days, but you just have to suck it up and do what you have to do. I think my uncle did a great job of really shaping my mentality the way it is today.”

Everything eventually fell into place for Hobbs’ newest No. 44 named Taylor. Playing at a school that once held a national record for averaging 114.6 points per game, Jeffery became the school’s all-time leading scorer in just two seasons. During his senior year he averaged 30 points per game and led the Eagles to a Class 5A state championship, the fifth title in 12 years for Head Coach Russ Gilmore.

“Jeffery came here for a chance to carry on the tradition of the Taylor family playing as a Hobbs Eagle,” Gilmore said. “There was a lot of pressure on him. But he became the all-time leading scorer in just two years, so I think he upheld the tradition quite well.”

As for being a part of that tradition, Jeffery embraced the attention.

“It was great. For a high school, we really had a packed house every night,” Jeffery said. “About three and a half thousand people. They expect you to win, and they aren’t satisfied with anything but a state championship.”

Vanderbilt was a late addition to the long list of schools recruiting Jeffery in the fall of 2007, but the Commodores quickly moved up after Jeffery made a visit to campus.

“Jeffery was pretty impressed with Vanderbilt,” Jeff Sr. said. “As far as the coaches, the arena, the campus layout, it had everything. I remember after his recruiting trip it was basically Vanderbilt.”

“I knew from the beginning that there would be an opportunity for playing time,” Jeffery said. “And once we got deeper into recruiting, I developed relationships with the coaching staff and I could really see that Vanderbilt was a great school and would give me an opportunity to play SEC basketball in front of good crowds.”

As a Commodore, Jeffery has given those crowds quite a show. Now in his junior season, he has already surpassed the 1,000-point plateau and created numerous highlight-reel plays. Commodore Head Coach Kevin Stallings credits Jeffery’s strong family history in the game with developing his tenacity.

“Jeffery comes from a family of good basketball players, and he’s a good basketball player,” Coach Stallings said. “It’s in his blood. He’s gotten a very competitive gene passed down from both his father and his uncle. Jeffery’s certainly been a terrific player for us.”

That passion for the game of basketball could help Jeffery continue to follow in his father’s footsteps–all the way to the NBA Draft.