For the Houston Rockets, Tuesday's narrow victory (107-105) over the talent-littered Los Angeles Lakers was an unlikely win led by sizzling play from a Houston point guard.
No, it wasn't Jeremy Lin, if that was your guess.
Leading all Rockets players in points with 22 points was...Toney Douglas.
No, not James Harden, who had a terrible 3-for-19 shooting night to finish with 10 points. And not Jeremy Lin, who only had four points on 2-for-8 shooting.
It was Toney Douglas, a defensively capable, but often maligned point guard who, unlike Lin, struggled mightily in his last stint with the New York Knicks.
In fact, Lin replaced Douglas as the Knicks' starting point guard last season when Lin was on an incredible role that hoops fans remember as Linsanity.
And yet, there Douglas was on the hardwood in Houston last night, coming off the bench alongside forward Greg Smith who was having a career night with 21 points, providing a one-two punch for the Rockets and sinking a key free throw late in the game that helped the Rockets beat a team that had the great Kobe Bryant and arguably the best center in the league in Dwight Howard.
And while the picture posted on the Houston Chronicle shows Lin eagerly cheering on his teammates during one of Houston's biggest wins of the season, one has to wonder--how is the rapidly improving Douglas going to affect Lin?
On the surface, the question seems silly. After all, it wasn't Douglas who the Rockets committed three years and $25 million to during the summer as the point guard of the future; that was Lin.
And for all the publicized downsides that Lin has in his game--the turnovers, not being able to go left, deferring to Harden--it seems he has a higher upside than Douglas, who had a forgettable last season in New York before heading to Houston, hitting only 32.4 percent from field goal range in 2011-12 and averaging only 6.2 points per game for the Knicks.
But signs are starting to show that Douglas is picking up the pace.
Lin has been averaging 33.5 minutes per game in Houston, the highest of his career. Douglas, meanwhile, has played an average of 16.3 minutes a night in his last 16 games for Houston.
Douglas shot a dreadful 12-for-44 in his first eight games, only 27.2 percent from the field marked by a 2-for-11 stinker in a 119-117 loss against Portland on Nov. 16. But Lin hasn't been much better from the field, hitting only 38.6 percent in his last 17 games.
And while Douglas has only been playing 14.6 minutes a night in his first eight games, his playing time has been getting higher as the season has progressed, averaging 17.5 minutes of play time in his last 9 games, and 17 minutes in his last six games.
In addition, Douglas has also been scoring more as of late, averaging 9.1 points a game, only a little more than a point shy of Lin's season average of 10.5 points in the last 17 games.
Tuesday night was only the second eyebrow-raising moment regarding Douglas. In Houston's 93-89 win over Chicago on Nov. 21, Rockets coach Kelvin Sampson benched Lin for much of the second half against Chicago guard Nate Robinson, who scored 21 points that night, in favor of Douglas, who is a better defensive stopper than Lin.
To say that Douglas is a threat to take Lin's starting job is still a very premature statement. After all, Lin has been a great playmaker for the Rockets since coming to Houston, averaging 6.4 assists a game. And he has shown that when he shoots the ball more, he can make a difference, as he did when he scored a season-high 19 points on Sunday against Utah on 8-of-14 shooting.
But it will be interesting to see if last night's game, where Douglas made 17 field goal attempts that helped him net 22 points, will serve as an inspiration for Lin to start shooting in double digits more often, which he has not been doing in nine of his 17 games.
Lin might not be in danger of losing his starting job at the moment, but the idea--no matter how small-- of losing it to the man who he replaced in New York last season could give Lin that added incentive to take matters into his own hands more often.
After all, nothing motivates an athlete more than knowing that there's someone in the rear view mirror just waiting to take their place.
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