"Well, they've stayed pretty healthy," said Bird, the Pacers' president of basketball operations. "We got to the Finals five times in a short period of time, and I always said that was a curse, really, because we never had time to recover. We'd go right back into the season. I played two years of playoff basketball, and I knew that was going to catch up sooner or later.

"When I came out of college, I was warned about playing on the outdoor courts and running on the streets, and they were right," Bird said. "It caught up. But that's the way I felt I had to get in shape and I had to do things different. I knew I was going to have a short career, but I didn't want to do anything that was going to stop me early. Later on in my career, I had the ankles and then the back, but, you know, it was worth every day."

Overall, Bird likes these Celtics.

"Picking up (Rasheed) Wallace is going to help them, and we know Marquis Daniels," he said. "He's going to be a major plus for them if he stays healthy down the stretch. I talked to Danny (Ainge) about Marquis, and I said, 'If you can get him, you'd better get him.' He'll make another bench player that can get a lot of things done for them. But overall they're very talented, and they're going to win a lot of games."

MAGIC 83, CELTICS 78: The Celtics allowed Orlando 29 points on 65 percent shooting in the first quarter Friday night and never recovered. They held the visitors to 54 points the rest of the way, but with 34.5 percent shooting for the night, the Celts could never take advantage of tightening their D. The C's tied the game at 78 with 2:54 left but went scoreless the rest of the way.