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apparel and sporting goods long known for their unsubtle wooing of whatever male athlete was hot at the moment.

Dylan took it all in stride, carrying the league on her broad shoulders and vaulting them all up through the glass ceiling and into the stratosphere of

popularity, money, and celebrity.

A lucky man knows, however, that into every life a little rain must fall.

Mac’s storm cloud burst upon him in all its glory during the summer Olympics. The American Women’s Basketball Team had the gold medal won before

they even left their own shores, and win it they did, but at a cost almost too high for any of them to pay.

The gold medal game was between the USA and Russia, a match up reminiscent of the famous men’s games back before the Berlin Wall came tumbling

down. As games went, it was a laugher, with the USA leading by almost forty points before the first half had even run out of minutes.

By all rights and common good sense, Dylan should have been warming the bench by the time the forth quarter rolled around. Fifty points was a lead even

a group of vertically challenged pre-schoolers wouldn’t have problems holding onto. Especially with only four minutes left.

But America wanted to see her Goddess in action, and with just a minute and a half to go, disaster struck, as if from Mount Olympus itself. The Russians,

who weren’t taking kindly to being used as cannon fodder, assembled quickly downcourt, and Dylan found herself pinned between two monoliths with

murder in their eyes just as she’d gone up for one of her infamous jams.

When the dust cleared, the monoliths were out cold, and Pallas Dylan Lambert’s playing career was over.

When she woke up from surgery that pinned her broken femur, and repaired her ruptured Achilles tendon and shredded ACL, she was told that she might

never walk again, and certainly not without a limp.

She proved them wrong, using the same focus and intensity of purpose she’d always employed to get what she wanted. Long before even the experts

thought it was possible, she was not only walking without a limp, she was also running, and juking, and jumping, making it clear to one and all that she

would be back as good as ever.

And that might have been true, had not her custom-made knee brace chosen to fail during what should have been a routine warm-up. Her still healing joint

gave out, dumping her to the ground as her newly repaired and suddenly overstressed ligaments went the way of her brace and tore themselves to shreds

once again.

The corrective surgery was simple enough, but when it was over, Dylan was left with one message.

Do it again, and you could lose your leg.

The owners of the Lightning, a consortium of old money gents from the deep south, panicked. Their team had held the championship title for five years,

and if a sixth wasn’t a sure bet, a great number of people would be very angry. And anger from some of the more notorious investors would mean a great

deal more than a nasty fan letter or two. Dark haired men in darker suits were experts at making their disappointments disappear. Permanently.

The fact of the matter was, however, that without their superstar, the Lightning was a mediocre team at best, more than capable of bringing up the

league’s rear in any given season. The owners had become so miserly and lazy after Dylan’s signing that they hadn’t even drafted a competent backup for

her, despite Mac’s loudly voiced objections, and instead spent their money on a plethora of short guards who were of no use to them now.

Seeing this, the rest of the league’s teams licked their chops like a pack of ravenous wolves with a dying elk in their midst. Trade offers were cut off at the

knees as owners and general managers rubbed their hands together with glee, convinced that their ships had finally come in.

All, that is, except for one.

The Birmingham Badgers was a rookie expansion team chock full of cast-offs, over-the-hill rejects, and mildly promising rookies long on potential and short

on experience. They weren’t planning on making any upward moves in the next few years, but no one seemed to mind. The Badgers had two things in

abundance; money and time. What they didn’t have was a coach.

Thus, the wheels were set in motion for a trade the likes of which had only really been seen in the NFL. The Badgers dealt two of their power forwards—a

crafty, if slow, veteran, and a young, somewhat talented rookie, plus their number four pick in the draft, all for the services of Pallas Dylan Lambert as the

Badgers’ new head coach.

When Mac heard the news, he came as close to having a stroke as he hoped he’d ever get. All of his arguments, and he made quite a few, fell on deaf

ears.

He tendered his resignation the day the deal was signed.

The Badgers accepted him with open arms the next day.

Which was why, two years later, he found himself sitting in the crowded stands at Madison Square Garden, watching Dylan Lambert watch ten young