Will there be a quarterback controversy in Houston?

You don’t lose your starting job to injury. Try telling that to Trent Green, Drew Bledsoe and Kevin Kolb.

While Kyle Lowry is hardly taking his respective league by storm, as Kurt Warner, Tom Brady and Michael Vick did, the Rockets backup point guard, a floor general of another kind, has been doing a bang-up job in the lead guard role in the place of injured starter Aaron Brooks.

In the past 12 games, Lowry has put up 13 points on 45.2% from the floor and an eye-popping (and very surprising) 46.2% from distance. He’s done a terrific job of running the offense, averaging 8.0 assists and just 2.3 turnovers, and defensively has picked 2.25 steals per during that stretch.

Rick Adelman praised Lowry’s defensive toughness and called him one of the better point guard rebounders in the league. Where Lowry has been exceptional, according to the Rockets coach, is getting into the middle and finding the open guy out on the floor.

“Changes our whole team,” said Adelman of Lowry.

So does this create a problem in naming a point guard starter when Brooks returns? Adelman says he doesn’t even think about that, sounding like he has no problem going back to using Lowry off the bench.

“You’ve got to remember — last year, Kyle was pretty good when he was playing with that second group,” said Adelman. “He was really good with Chase, he was really good with all those guys. Kyle is going to play with whoever, and the biggest thing about it is Aaron and Kyle play well together.”

For Lowry’s part, he says above all else, he just wants to win games.

“Of course, I always wanted to be a starter. That was always my goal,” said Lowry. “That’s the coach’s decision. All I can do is go out there and play basketball. I want to be a starter, but if coach decides to put me back with the second unit, that’s fine with me as long as we’re winning games.”

>> Comments