Not that we need another reason to feel older, but …

Larry Bird turned 60 on Wednesday.

Think about that.

The athlete who framed so much of our sports-watching lives. Wasn’t it just yesterday that Larry Legend, perhaps the most organic of all the greats — no frills, just running the stairs at the Garden three hours before every game — wore No. 33 and the Celtics never lost?

Now he’s 60.

Praise the Lord and pass the Vitamin E.

Few, if any, other athletes stir the memories in yours truly the way he does. It’s not necessarily all the wins, although you could count on the Celts in those days almost like the UConn women now. It was how Bird framed days and nights spent watching the excellence.

For me? In the basement with my father. We had the auxiliary TV down there. He and I would watch the Celtics every night, leaving my mother and sister upstairs. The night in 1985 when Dennis Johnson hit a buzzer beater in Game 4 of the finals, the neighborhood was awakened.

There was Game 7 of 1984, when Bird got to wear the tiara for the second time, waving the towel at the berserk Garden, while the Celts beat the Lakers.

There was the clincher in 1986 — the same day as my high school graduation party — when I was conspicuously absent for alarming parts of it … downstairs watching the game.

This is how I frame memories. Based on what game was on that day. (Sad but true). And nobody brings back the great old days like this now 60-year old.

That basement was our sanctuary. And it started because of Bird-watching. Never forget the night we were upstairs, momentarily unaware the basement was flooding with water because of a storm. We heard the Quartz heater — remember those? — hit the floor. Rushed down there and saw the water gushing in.

Let the record show our first act was to move the television to higher ground.

The other furniture would have to wait.

And now Larry Bird is 60.

Heck, on away bus trips in high school — I was the basketball team manager at Xavier High — I would break into my rendition of old Garden public address announcer Andy Jick and the way he’d introduce the Celtics starting lineup. It was a thing. Larry was always last. “And at forward from Indiana State, 6-foot-9 number thirty-threeeeeeeeeee Larry Bird. Jick (who has become a friend, ironically) would always extend the “e” on “33.”

I try to watch the NBA now, especially with Kris Dunn playing for the Timberwolves, the Celtics a better team and the Warriors who threaten to score 150 every night. But it’s not the same. There was something magical about the Bird years that can’t be recreated. It almost adds to a little resentment.

Occasionally, I’ll sit down to watch Larry Bird’s 50 Greatest Moments on NBA TV. Hilarious. The buzzer-beaters. The night he was bored on a West Coast trip and took every shot left-handed. The night he got 60 against Atlanta and cameras zoomed on some of the Hawks players falling over each other in disbelief.

I got to meet Bird once. Preseason game at the XL Center (merely the Hartford Civic Center in those days). People who know me know I speak with an occasional stutter, which with some very persistent and appreciated help these days, is becoming much less frequent.

But that night? I approached Bird and would have made Porky Pig sound like Winston Churchill. Bird smiled and said, “relax.” I managed a couple of inane questions. And to think I’m the guy who likes to poke fun at the way people act around celebrities.

And now Larry is 60.

I suspect this younger generation of fans has their guys, too. LeBron, Curry, Jeter, Ortiz, Brady … and on the band plays. Hope you get as much from appreciating them as I did from Larry Legend.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro