It just didn't feel quite right Monday night, the start of this Boston-Philadelphia NBA Eastern Conference semifinal series, especially since the Celtics' 117-101 win was hardly indicative of so many of the previous 100 playoff games between these two franchises.
Yet regardless of who ultimately wins this 20th playoff matchup between them, for those of us old enough to remember the Celtics' Bill Russell battling the 76ers' Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain in the 1960s, or Larry Bird against Dr. J in the 1980s, a trip to the NBA Finals always on the line, this is all arriving a bit too soon and with too little edginess.
Nor is it only the playoff round. The rickety old Boston Garden of suffocating heat and "Havlicek stole the ball" and a parquet floor filled with dead spots to do in the visitors is nothing more than a distant memory, replaced by the modern palace known as TD Garden.
Heck, even though Boston's timeless uniforms still look the same most of the time as those worn by past Celtics legends, they never wear black shoes anymore, which the late, great Red Auerbach demanded, insisting they made his team look slower than they were. And who's to argue with a guy who won nine NBA titles in 10 seasons as a head coach from 1956 until his retirement at the close of the 1966 season?
Now it's the games that have grown slower, what with the action seeming to stop every two minutes for referees to huddle around instant-replay screens while some Oz-like figure in Secaucus, N.J. - seriously, Secaucus, which is Algonquian for "place of snakes," as any Indiana Pacers fan surely would attest after Indy's loss to Cleveland this past week - gives the final verdict.
Beyond that, the rosters change as quickly as diapers. For proof, consider that the five Cavaliers who started in Cleveland's series-clinching win over Indy on Sunday were the only ones on the roster from last year's NBA Finals team.
So while Philly may have a superstar in the making in redshirt rookie Ben Simmons and the Celtics will counter with the game's best coach without a title in the person of Brad Stevens, you can't watch the opening tip as you did in their epic 1981 Eastern Conference finals and already know the 76ers' lineup of Dr. J, Mo Cheeks, Darryl Dawkins, Lionel Hollins and Caldwell Jones while the Celts counter with Bird, Tiny Archibald, Chris Ford, Robert Parish and Cornbread Maxwell.
These were household names for anyone and everyone who cared about the NBA. Now you've got the 76ers, of all teams, with their so-called "United Nations lineup," which could feature the following five players at any given time:
Point guard Simmons from Australia, center Joel Embiid from Cameroon, forward Dario Saric from Croatia, shooting guard Marco Belinelli from Italy and forward Ersan Ilyasova from Turkey.
As for the Celtics, they can counter with Aron Baynes (New Zealand), Abdel Nader (Egypt) and Guerschon Yabusele of Dreux, France. Even longtime NBA star and former Florida Gator Al Horford was born in the Dominican Republic.
You almost wonder if it isn't time to rename the NBA the International Basketball Association or World Basketball Association, especially since the Toronto Raptors posted the Eastern Conference's best record in the regular season.
But with apologies to those who currently view the league as LeBron James versus the Golden State Warriors - given that James and his Cleveland Cavaliers have met the defending champs in three straight Finals - there are still a few of us who long for a return to the time when Celtics-76ers and Celtics-Lakers meant everything.
In fact, current Sixers coach Brett Brown, 57 years young, felt obliged to show his young team a video dedicated to the rivalry between these two.
"Before we even get into X's and O's and scout tape, look at the history here," Brown told his team. "Have a real kind of knowledge base of our two organizations. It's something historic, it's something very special."
Or as former Sixer Charles Barkley said in describing the rivalry: "One word - hatred."
Indeed, the intense dislike these two franchises felt for each other in the days of Bird and Dr. J can be summed up in the choking incident between the two that occurred not in a playoff game but a November tussle in 1984. Talk about hatred.
Then again, animosity, however regrettable when it boils over into a physical altercation, is also what makes sports great, whether it's Cowboys-Redskins, Yankees-Red Sox, McEnroe-Connors, Alabama-Auburn or Celtics-Sixers.
And judging from what Celtics guard Terry Rozier wore to Monday's game, there is no lack of trash-talking potential for this one, at least on Boston's side.
Having gotten the best of Milwaukee guard Eric Bledsoe in the opening round, Rozier wore an old Drew Bledsoe New England Patriots jersey to TD Garden, a subtle yet unmistakable dig at the Bucks player who said he didn't even know who Rozier was when that series began.
Said Embiid to ESPN on Sunday: "I think that when you look at the whole league and you talk about the future of the league, we're up there. They're up there. So it's going to be fun the next couple of years."
Watching two teams who hate each other square off in the playoffs always is, even if it's one round too soon this time around.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.