LAS VEGAS If Charlotte Bobcats lottery pick Michael Kidd-Gilchrist seeks hope that a jump shot can be fixed, he need only glance toward new teammate Jeffery Taylor.

Kidd-Gilchrist was drafted second overall, Taylor 31st. In the shorthand draftniks use to describe prospects, Taylor often was labeled a “3-point specialist.” That made Taylor chuckle.

“I only made one 3 my sophomore season,” Taylor recalled, and he doesn’t exaggerate: Vanderbilt’s statistics list him 1-of-11 from the arc in 2009-10.

Last season as a senior, Taylor made 42.3 percent of his 3-point attempts. He has range and touch, as demonstrated Monday night when he made back-to-back half-court shots in a contest to end the Bobcats’ first summer-league practice.

Kidd-Gilchrist is a remarkable defender/athlete who’s just 18 and needs help with the mechanics of his shooting and dribbling. Taylor doesn’t have so many natural gifts, but he’s more refined, as you might expect from a four-year college player.

They play the same position, but they’re quite different. Kidd-Gilchrist is a small forward playing more like a power forward. Taylor is a small forward who coach Mike Dunlap says can just as easily be a shooting guard.

“He’s well-rounded. It’s nice that he can shoot the 3-ball and he can take the ball athletically to the rim,” Dunlap said of Taylor following Wednesday morning practice at Nevada-Las Vegas.

“He’s one of the better defenders in that league, the SEC. (Florida’s Bradley) Beal said that and also (Kentucky’s) Kidd-Gilchrist said that about him.”

There was a time not so long ago when defense was all you’d hear about Taylor. He showed up at Vanderbilt from Sweden, by way of New Mexico, as a physical kid with a knack for reading defensive angles. In a time when college seniors are an afterthought in the NBA draft, he made himself into a pro over four seasons.

His father, a former Texas Tech player also named Jeff, played briefly in the NBA before establishing himself in a Swedish pro league. Jeffery grew up in Sweden, and before his junior year of high school decided he’d get better basketball training in the United States.

A dual citizen of Sweden and the United States, Taylor moved in with his grandmother in New Mexico. One uncle was an assistant coach at a high school where Taylor played his final two seasons.

Taylor speaks English with minimal Swedish accent, but you can hear the twang from the U.S. Southwest. He picked Vanderbilt for its top academics and for the sophisticated coaching he’d get from Kevin Stallings. It didn’t hurt his recruitment that the Commodores were losing six seniors, so there would be abundant playing time available immediately.

What lifted his 3-point shooting from 11 percent to 42 percent? Practice, practice, practice.

“I shot all the time,” Taylor recalled. “I had to completely change the way I shot and my mentality. It was a lot of work.”

Notes

• Bobcats veterans Gerald Henderson and Reggie Williams showed up Wednesday in Las Vegas to practice with the summer-league squad. Henderson and Williams aren’t eligible to play in summer league games.

“Very encouraging,” Dunlap said. “They didn’t have to do that, it was their choice. I told them I really wanted them here.”

• Henderson has lost some weight, switching to a gluten-free diet of late.

• At Tuesday night’s practice, after guard Cory Higgins lost the ball out of bounds, Dunlap briefly stopped the session to tell players not to beat themselves up over mistakes right now. Dunlap said he won’t be mad about mistakes, only about a lack of effort.

“We have to play hard. I’m hitting that drum as much as I can – that if they’ll give us that, we’ll work with them on eliminating mistakes,” Dunlap said Wednesday.

“We want them to play to their strengths; if you’re constantly hammering them, it gets into their confidence and that’s a tough one for the young players to deal with.”