The Magic will stay in New York an extra day because they don't play at Boston until Wednesday. No one in the Magic camp is disappointed.

New Year's Eve in the Big Apple? Ah, the possibilities.

And Magic Coach Doc Rivers won't impose any special rules for tonight. There is no practice today, either.

"They're adults," Rivers said. "Treating them like kids gets you in trouble. I just try to tell them to stay out of dangerous situations."

For most of the players, this is their first New Year's Eve in New York. It's odd, considering they travel so much, but most of them have had games elsewhere on this day.

"It's fun," Magic forward Jud Buechler said. "I'm not going to be going down to Times Square or anything, but I'm looking forward to it. I always love coming here."

A return to normalcy

Because of an unforgiving schedule and injuries of late, the Magic have had one formal practice in the past month.

"And we haven't had a quality practice since training camp," Rivers said.

All that will change now that the Magic enter a portion of the schedule that's more spread out -- and now that they have enough healthy players.

They'll have their first practice between games in three weeks Tuesday in New Jersey before flying to Boston.

The Magic have played 32 games in 62 days so far this season, including playing eight times on back-to-back nights. It's the most brutal stretch any team in the NBA has played.

"That's been difficult," Rivers said. "We've used shootarounds more than we ever had. And I don't even like shootarounds, really. From this point on, though, we'll have time to rest, practice and gather ourselves."

It's a difficult job

Rivers said he doesn't know if he could handle being in Knicks interim coach Don Chaney's situation.

"I think taking any interim job is impossible," said Rivers, who served as an assistant coach in Atlanta.

"You want to do things your way, but things have already been set another way. I couldn't do that."