Wherever Rick Pitino goes next, his next job will be easy compared to the his final days as Celtics coach. Pitino spent many of those trying times speaking with Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy. Excerpts of "Celtic Slide" -- Shaughnessy's article in the February 5 issue of The Mag -- follow:

Those final days had been painful. Joanne Pitino stopped going to games, players strayed from the huddle when he diagrammed plays during timeouts, fans at the FleetCenter baited Pitino from behind the bench and the owner said nothing at all. Pitino wasn't sleeping, he put his house on the market and the situation was creeping into his home. His son Richard, a senior basketball player at a local Catholic high school, had already scratched Boston College off his list -- too close to the storm. And, after discovering how tough it had been on 10-year-old Ryan, Pitino was considering sending his two younger children to school in South Florida. "He had been holding it in," Pitino says. "Finally, I got him to tell me. It just poured out of him. He was shaking and crying. The kids were teasing him at school, asking him why he'd wear a Celtic jacket and calling him a loser."

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UNLV, though, was just a potential escape hatch. Pitino never learned how to win in Boston, but he did know when it was over, even if it meant walking away from about $25 million left on his deal. "I just want three months' severance," he said. He talked about how hard it was on his family, how hard it was to taste failure for the first time. And he wondered how he should exit. "How do you think I should do this and keep my reputation intact?" he asked.

He said he would meet with owner Paul Gaston in mid-January, but the meeting never took place. On Jan. 5, as the Celtics struggled at home against the Warriors in a game he'd declared a must win, Pitino sent assistant coach Jim O'Brien down the bench to find out why Walker was pouting. "You don't even want to know," O'Brien told him. "Antoine says he's not getting enough touches." Pitino made up his mind right there that he would quit.

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Pitino spent that Sunday morning talking with his wife. The next morning, while the Celtics were back in Boston preparing for Portland, Pitino walked over to his fax machine and sent a three-paragraph letter of resignation to the Celtics' PR office. Three-and-a-half years into a 10-year contract, he stepped down after winning only 41% (102-146) of his games and failing to reach the postseason. For the first time in his career, the 48-year-old Pitino had left his team -- and his future -- in worse shape than when he'd arrived.

"I gave up Camelot for what I thought was another Camelot," Pitino says. "But it didn't turn out to be Camelot for me."

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His first game was a victory over Michael Jordan in a packed FleetCenter. Afterward, Pitino celebrated in a private room he'd rented out in Four's, a popular sports bar across the street from the New Garden. He was surrounded by stockbrokers, alumni boosters, scouts, horse trainers, chefs, business partners -- the posse of family and friends that had followed him from Providence to New York to Lexington to Boston. None could have guessed that this was as good as it would ever get.

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Off the court, he treated his players like college freshmen, giving them a handbook that outlined 36 rules, with violations resulting in fines. Players who had guests in their hotel rooms without advance permission were docked $3,000. Failure to bring an extra set of contact lenses netted a $500 fine.

Bill Walton, who won a ring with Boston in '86 and still considers himself a proud member of the Celtics family, looks at it this way: "When Rick Pitino came in and started marketing himself as the savior, it alienated some of the players and fans who had learned from the Russells, the Cousys and the Birds that it's really all about players who leave their blood, their lives, on the court. The Celtics family is not really interested in a coach coming in and telling them it's about strategy, suits and hair."

This article appears in the February 5 issue of ESPN The Magazine, on newsstands Jan. 24.