Hall of Fame hoops scribe Jackie MacMullan takes an interesting looks back at Boston's original "Big Three" as the current "Big Three" roll to the end of the road as a celebrated trio. As you can imagine, Indiana Pacers president Larry Bird is quoted extensively including his thoughts about former teammate and current C's GM, Danny Ainge dealing with the reality of trying to handle the end of an era and the difficult task of trying to use Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce to gather assets to start a new era in Boston.

For emphasis, Bird reveals that he and Ainge discussed a deal to send Ray Allen to the Pacers but they didn't get very far.

"Here's the thing," Bird said. "When Danny and I talked about trading for Ray, he wanted Tyler Hansbrough and a first-round pick. If that's the value he's putting on Ray Allen, he ain't getting it. That tells me he's in no hurry to trade him.

"All that talk about Danny blowing it up, about not making the same mistakes as Red, is fine.

"But now that it's his turn to pull the trigger, it's a helluva lot harder than it looks."

In an absolute vacuum the thought of a veteran scorer like Ray Allen supplementing the current Pacers playing rotation sounds wonderful, but obviously paying such a hefty price for three months or so of Allen's presence would not be worth it.

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