Larry Bird needed some help. He needed a message passed along.

The Pacers president of basketball operations — and, oh yeah, Celtics legend — was talking about his former club’s rebuilding and all the draft picks the C’s have coming from other sources. But there is something he wanted Danny Ainge to know.

“He’s got a lot of assets and a lot of different types of players,” Bird said. “I don’t know all the draft picks he has. I hear he’s got quite a few.”

Bird then smiled.

“But do me a favor,” he said, “and tell Danny he can only have 15 players on the team.”

The Celtics could be adding quite a bit to their roster next summer, holding Brooklyn’s No. 1 unencumbered and, potentially, first-rounders from Dallas and Minnesota.

Bird zeroed in on the No. 1 from the Nets, part of the package gained when the Celts traded away Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.

“That’s the pick,” Bird said. “And, hey, if he doesn’t just make that pick, maybe he can package it all together and get a really good player.”

Under any circumstances, rebuilding is a difficult job that Bird knows all too well as he tries to reconfigure the Pacers.

“Yeah, it’s tough,” he said. “It’s definitely a four-year deal.

“The problem in our league is that if you get stuck in the middle (of the draft) like with the 14 to 18th pick, you can get good players there, but they’re not game-changers.

“There’s trades and free agency, but the draft is a big part of what (the Pacers) do because we don’t spend the money a lot of teams do. Our payroll this year is $71-and-a-half to $72 million, and we need a pick. We know that. We knew it going in. We’d like to have another pick, but we just can’t get it right now.

“So building, rebuilding and all that, you better make sure you get the right players, because if you don’t and you miss out one year, it’ll set you back a year. So it’s tough. It seems like every three or four years, we’ve got to reload here, and that’s what we try to do.”

The Celtics can only hope Bird’s math is correct. Ainge is currently in the third year of the present reconstruction.

This week’s? C’s timeline

Tuesday, at Milwaukee, 8 p.m. — As with the Celts, bigger things are expected of the Bucks this season after a .500 record last year. But, again as with the Celts, the early road has been a bit rocky. Giannis Antetokounmpo has taken a step forward in his development, and free agent acquisition Greg Monroe is putting up scoring and rebound numbers, but starting the season with three straight losses isn’t what Milwaukee had in mind.

Wednesday, vs. Indiana, 7:30 p.m. — Turnabout is fair play. The Pacers were on the road to meet the Pistons last Tuesday while the Celtics could watch from their hotel in Indianapolis in preparation for Wednesday’s game at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse. This time the Pacers get to hang out in Boston Tuesday as the C’s battle the Bucks. The local five can only hope the ultimate result is the same for the more road weary team as Indy shook off the road and took a two-point win.

Friday, vs. Atlanta, 7:30 p.m. — This will be a major test for the Celts, who were predicted by some to be this year’s version of the Hawks — a generally no-star club that rose in the 2014-15 standings by playing a cohesive team game. Atlanta’s 60 wins would seem to be out of the question, and the C’s will have to start hitting some 3-pointers if they want to make the analogy plausible on even a minute level.

PACERS LEGEND DANIELS LATEST LOSS IN NBA’S TOUGH YEAR

It’s been a tough year for the NBA, with members of the family passing away before their time — as if “before their time” is even a concept for mortals to decide. A few of the losses have struck us even more profoundly because of relationships developed over the years.

Pacers legend Mel Daniels left us nine days ago, and he’ll be remembered here for the juxtaposition of a gentle man with a crushing handshake. One of the first things I learned on the NBA beat many years ago was to avoid shaking hands with Daniels. I’m not exactly small, but he’d make you a lefty for a week all in the name of a warm greeting.

Daniels had a great sense of humor, but he would turn serious in a heartbeat when he felt the need arise.

Several years ago, the Herald sent me to cover a Boston College game at Kansas on the way to a December Celtics road trip that began in Denver. Daniels was there to scout the game, and we had a very nice pregame visit. Then at halftime he sought me out and wanted to discuss BC coach Al Skinner.

“How come no one talks about this guy for NBA jobs?” Daniels asked.

It was as if he thought an injustice was being committed, and in the case of Skinner, Daniels was probably right.

Certainly it was not just when Darryl Dawkins left us in August. Beyond the fact he was just 58, the loss was stunning because Chocolate Thunder had begun to get in better shape and lose some of the excess weight those close to him were concerned would be a problem as he got older.

The Dawkins memories that will endure have nothing to do with broken backboards or the like. They’re of the fact a simple handshake was never good enough. He had to make it a hug, and, as we noted on Twitter after his death, that is most representative of the way he approached life.

For Flip Saunders, life was a hell of a lot more than just basketball. He loved talking about the game, and he could do it nonstop for hours. But we also had some common friends, and they were usually the signal that we were done talking hoop.

Well into a shootaround or pregame interview to gather quotes for a Herald story, Saunders would say, “Enough of this crap, have you talked to Bones?”

It’s hard to realize we won’t be able to talk to Mel, Darryl or Flip any longer. More we’ll just be appreciative of the times we were.