Silver: No Evidence Any NBA Has Ever Lost Single Game On Purpose

Jackie MacMullan, ESPNBoston.com, Updated: June 29, 2013, 10:46 AM ET, wrote:The last time the Celtics did that was in 1996-97. M.L. Carr was the coach and general manager, coaxed into the dual role one year earlier by owner Paul Gaston, who paid him $1 million to replace Chris Ford on the bench and, as Carr described, "take one for the team."

According to Carr, Gaston made his objective for the 1996-97 season clear: Land Tim Duncan in the draft.

Thus, Carr's charge, with a roster that included Antoine Walker, David Wesley, Dana Barros, Dino Radja and Rick Fox, was to play hard -- and lose.

"It's so difficult," Carr said, "because it goes completely against your basketball DNA.

"Danny (Ainge) is absolutely doing the right thing for the Celtics franchise. But he's going to have a real tough road while they rebuild."

As GM, Carr made sure he didn't sign any expensive or overly talented free agents. Because he was his own coach, there was no backlash from the bench regarding his personnel decisions.

"I was bringing in guys like Nate Driggers and Brett Szabo," Carr said. "It was a joke. But the idea was not to make a move that would help us too much."

The hardest part, said Carr, was straddling the fine line between encouraging his team to play the game the right way but make sure they didn't win too much.

"I remember one game in particular, when David Wesley was hitting jump shots and 3-pointers all over the floor," Carr said. "I had to get him out of the game.

"He came over to me and said, 'Coach, what are you doing? I just hit four shots in a row.' I said, 'I know, David, but I'm experimenting.'

"I'll tell you, it was brutal. Those players were smart. They knew what we were doing.

"I told them, 'I won't be here a year from now. This is for your future. In the final analysis, you'll benefit from this.' But after a while, they didn't want to hear it."

Rick Fox, who captained that 1996-97 team, said slogging through that "incredibly painful" season was the most challenging time of his career.

"I knew right from the start it was going to be a different season," Fox said. "Our practices were like track meets. We just ran and ran and ran. After 6 years in the league I knew, 'We can't keep this up. We're going to get hurt.' I think we had 9 guys who had surgery that year."

Fox led the team with 15.4 points a game and struggled through a plantar fascia injury that, he said, "left my foot purple." He wanted desperately to be a leader to stem the negativity that consistently cropped up, so he played on.

"There was one game where I had like 30 points through three quarters," Fox recalled. "We got a lead and I was thinking, 'Finally, we're getting a win.' But then I had to sit down for seven minutes of the fourth quarter and watch it all slip away.

"It defied logic."