I kind of agree with Jeff's point yesterday on the airwaves. He said something like (paraphrased quote): "The Celtics want to rebuild and they get to avoid paying a coach 7 million per year to oversee that phase, plus they got a draft pick from letting him go. Doc Rivers gets to coach a good team, ultimately having a say on personnel decision. The Clippers also win as signing Doc allows them to get a great coach and have a bigger chance of re-signing Chris Paul."
Basically, the point is it doesn't really matter whether Doc "quit" or not. The Celts obviously want to start over (as proven by the Nets trade) and paying Doc a huge sum of money for that doesn't make sense at all. So what if he quit? It was better for Celtics management.