“We don’t have any leadership here,” was the statement made by Larry Bird following the Boston Celtics’ humiliation in the 1983 playoffs.

According to M.L. Carr, the Boston Celtics didn’t want to win an NBA championship during the 1982–1983 campaign.

Following their NBA championship run in 1981—the first season with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish—the Boston Celtics had aspirations of winning titles every year. The Celtics’ confidence was severely damaged by a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference Finals the next year, and their self-confidence was further undermined by the Milwaukee Bucks’ decisive sweep of them.

The players recognized a structural problem within the organization as morale plummeted. Though the average Celtics fan was ignorant of it, the players were unhappy with coach Bill Fitch’s managerial style.

M.L. Carr on the 1983 Celtics goal

Forward M.L. Carr of the Boston Celtics was extremely upfront when he said that the team’s main goal in the 1983 campaign was to fire coach Fitch rather than win a title.

“I’ll admit it,” Carr remarked in the book When the Game Was Ours by Jackie MacMullan. “Winning a title wasn’t our aim in 1983. The goal was to eliminate Fitch.”