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Boston-Philadelphia. Basketball wars.

The Celtics are playing the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the NBA playoffs and it is a renewal of hostilities that goes back 60 years. This is the 20th postseason meeting between Boston and Philadelphia. It is as close to Red Sox-Yankees as you are going to get in any Celtic spring.

In one of their more impressive wins of the season, the undermanned Celtics (no Jaylen Brown, no Kyrie Irving, no Gordon Hayward, no Malcolm Butler) thrashed the white-hot Sixers, 117-101, in a 48-minute Game 1 frenzy that honored six decades of playoffs featuring the Colonial rivals.

It’s odd that this is only the third time the cities have dueled in the NBA tournament in the last 33 years. Celtic fans of a certain age remember when it seemed like Boston and Philly jousted in the playoffs every spring.

This is the rivalry that gave us Wilt Chamberlain vs. Bill Russell (Russell made a rare appearance at the New Garden for Game 1). This is the rivalry that gave us “Havlicek Stole the Ball’’ and Sam Jones picking up a photographer’s stool to defend himself against a charging Chamberlain. This is the rivalry that gave us Cedric Maxwell going after a fan at the old Spectrum, and Larry Bird wrestling with Julius Erving on the Garden parquet floor. Boston vs. Philadelphia gave us Red Auerbach challenging Moses Malone to a fight, Kevin McHale blocking Andrew Toney’s shot, and Celtic fans chanting “Beat LA!’’ when the Sixers eliminated the Celtics to go to the Finals in 1982.

“Those were good days,’’ McHale recalled before Game 1 (he is here working for TNT). “And I think the rivalry is going to be back for a while now. These two teams we are seeing in this series have a chance to be relevant for the next six or seven seasons and that’s hard to do. That’s about what our real window was from 1981-88 and I think they might be going back to that.’’

I asked McHale which Sixer he routinely guarded back in the day when the Celtics met Philadelphia almost annually in the playoffs and he answered, “Whoever the best guy was. You don’t think Larry was going to take him, do you?’’

Max had pretty much the same response.

“Did you guard Julius when you played these guys?’’ I asked Max.

“What do you think?’’ he answered, smiling. “Larry? No way!’’

Tommy Heinsohn first played against the Philadelphia Warriors in the playoffs in 1958 and remembers his favorite moment at Convention Hall in the 1960 conference finals.

“That was Wilt’s first season [37.6 points, 27 rebounds per game],’’ said Heinsohn. “We beat them in the final game of the playoffs [119-117] when I made a tip-in of Bill Sharman’s shot at the buzzer. Wilt was all lined up to block a shot, but I shut up 11,000 fans all at once. You know how tough that is to do?

“They had famous hecklers. One guy was on me before a game one night and I went over to him and said, in a stage whisper, ‘No one is allowed to talk to me like that unless his fly is up.’ The guy was so embarrassed, he never came back.

“There was another guy who sat right under the basket and was brutal to us year after year. One night Jack Nichols and Cooz hatched a plan at halftime. While we were warming up for the second half, Nichols stood in front of the fan and called for a ball from Cousy, who was standing at the foul line. Cooz wound up and threw his fastball and Nichols stepped aside and Cooz hit the guy right in the head!’’

Good times.

The modern-day Sixers are coached by Brett Brown, a 57-year-old basketball lifer from South Portland, Maine, who played four years of college ball on Commonwealth Avenue at Boston University for Rick Pitino. Brown and his dad are both in the New England Basketball Hall of Fame and the Sixer boss has a true grasp of what this rivalry was and could be again.

“I personally grew up with this rivalry,’’ said the coach. “It was right on my doorstep growing up.’’

Brown is supposed to have the better team in this series. The “Trust The Process’’ Sixers, who went 75-253 (average season, 19-63) over the last four seasons, broke out in a good way this year and earned theNo. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference. Philly won 24 of its last 28 games and wiped out the Miami Heat in five games in its first-round series.

The Sixers had not played a game in six days when they took the floor Monday and it showed. Tatum scorched them for 16 of his career-high 28 points in the first half and the Green led, 56-45, at halftime.

Tatum kept the heat on in the second half and became the first Celtic rookie with three straight 20-point playoff games since Bird did it four times in 1980. Meanwhile, the estimable Brown was just another Prunty speedbump for Brad Stevens.

“Defensively, offensively, this isn’t who we are,’’ Brown said after the loss. “This was a very poor game from us. To think that this game is a reflection of what we’ve been doing the last few months would be a mistake.’’

The Celtics had a lot to do with Philly’s woes. And yet Stevens, in Belichickian fashion, said it was not one of Boston’s better games.

It looked pretty good to all of us.

Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid — a legitimate big man cut in the mold of Wilt the Stilt — led the visitors with 31 points and 13 rebounds.

But the Sixers lost. As Russell, Heinsohn, McHale, Maxwell, and Danny Ainge nodded in approval.

It just like the old days at the New Garden.

Dan Shaughnessy can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com.