The Empty Chair

If he kept him, every possession would orbit a player good enough to win thirty games and not good enough to change the franchise. If he stretched Reddick, the dead money would hurt, but the locker room would breathe. If he cut Voss, agents would call him reckless, but Jamal Brooks could play. Maybe not now. Maybe not ever. But Daniel had watched Brooks in pre-draft workouts three years earlier, before the knee, before the back, before the league wrote fragile beside his name in permanent ink. The next morning he met Evelyn in a glass conference room above the practice court. "Tell me why I shouldn't hire a veteran executive and ask you to go back downstairs," she said.