Clippers are game but out of luck

The evening began with sobs, Doc Rivers admitting he missed the strong shoulder of his late mother Bettye.

The evening ended in sighs, the decimated Clippers realizing no amount of support could keep them upright.

With Chris Paul on the bench wearing Cliff Paul glasses, with Blake Griffin in the locker room giving pep talks, their remaining teammates scratched and scraped for as long as possible Wednesday night in a doomed playoff game against the Portland Trail Blazers.

Finally, in a fourth quarter that began tied, the Clippers crumbled to pressure, exhaustion and a barrage of Trail Blazers jumpers, and the fight ended.

It was Trail Blazers 108, Clippers 98, and genuine sadness everywhere.

The group of Clippers role players and backups, bathed in grimaces and sweat, walked off the court with heads down and shoes scuffling a floor that was ultimately too big for them. The Staples Center crowd that had spent the night pleading and pushing and even erupting in a high school-style cheer — “Let’s go Clippers, let’s go!” — walked slowly away amid a slow grumble.

Many of those fans paused before reaching the exits and turned their backs toward the court as if getting one last look at their team. Good idea, because they’ll probably not see them again this season. The Trail Blazers lead the series, 3-2, with Game 6 in Portland on Friday, but this honestly feels over.

Historically in an NBA seven-game series, a team that takes a 3-2 lead wins 82% of the time, but you don’t even need those statistics to guess how this is going to turn out.

The Clippers are lost without their point guard and power forward, as both Paul and Griffin suffered postseason-ending injuries Monday night in Portland. Without them Wednesday, the rest of the team played hard, but not for long enough. They played tough, but with two arms tied behind their backs, their punch finally disappeared.

The Trail Blazers outscored them by that 10-point margin in a fourth quarter in which guard Damian Lillard went off for 16 points against a wandering and weary defense while the Clippers’ remaining veteran leader, Jamal Crawford, missed all four shots and his team made only one of six three-point shots.

Said Rivers: “They turned their energy up and we were exhausted. That’s not conditioning. That was emotion.”

Said Portland Coach Terry Stotts: “The focus and energy made the difference.”

The Clippers couldn’t keep that focus, and ultimately lost that energy. In the end, they looked like owner Steve Ballmer as he was walking away from what will probably be a second consecutive failure by his $2-billion investment

His shirt was rumpled, his expression was dazed, and he was very much alone.

“I think we were really excited to be out there, we’ve been through a lot in the last 48 hours,” said Crawford, who missed 17 of 23 shots. “We have to do a little better job calming ourselves down, be in the moment and not get too jacked up.”

It was clearly going to be a somber evening from the moment Rivers held his pregame news conference. Amid questions about how the Clippers could handle the two serious injuries to their two best players in Game 4 in Portland, one query hit home.

Brad Turner of The Times asked: “Who do you lean on to make sure you don’t get discouraged?”

Said Rivers: “I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

Moment later, Rivers began softly crying.

“I’m not crying over being discouraged,” he said. “Brad made me think about my mom, so, that would have been the person.”

Bettye Rivers died in June 2015.

Soon after the emotional news conference, the first quarter appropriately started miserably. The arena was half empty, partially because of the 7 p.m. start time, and the Clippers seemed fully confused.

Austin Rivers, Paul Pierce and Crawford were in the starting lineup with DeAndre Jordan and J.J. Redick. It was a group that had played together for all of four minutes this season, so it was no surprise they acted like strangers. They wandered around on each possession as if dazed, with shots coming from weird spots at awkward times, everyone just sort of staring at each other.

Even the fans were having a tough time, At one point in the first quarter, the Clippers’ mascot, Chuck the Condor, was banging a drum behind a fan with baseline seats. The fan turned and tried to shoo him away. Chuck wouldn’t leave. The fan turned again and barked at him to get lost. Chuck finally moved.

The Clippers tied the score at halftime, but then missed the first 10 shots of the third quarter. They fought to tie it again after three periods, but fell apart early in the final period, trailed by 13 midway through the fourth, and it was over.

“They wanted to win, they were up, sometimes up too much,” Rivers said. “I liked the emotion but they couldn’t sustain it.”

It is doubtful they can sustain through a Game 6 in Portland to force a Game 7 here Sunday, so only one serious question remains. Once this dreadful final week has ended and their basketball summer officially begins, will Clippers management break up the core group of players one year before the expiration of the contracts of Paul and Griffin? Do they throw up their hands at three consecutive seasons of sudden and stunning postseason failure and try something new? Or do they figure that, given the vagaries of the NBA postseason, they might as well try it with their core group one more time?

It says here that management should keep them together. Don’t give into the Clipper Curse, keep fighting it. Don’t trade an injured Griffin for less than full value, keep him and hope he gives you one last contract push. Don’t send Paul away while he is still this team’s heart and soul, keep him for one last run.

Besides, of course, Rivers the general manager would never put Rivers the coach in a rebuilding position, not when they have seemed so close so many times.

“We like who we are,” he said. “I’ve evaluated that already.”

The Clippers team that showed up Wednesday night was not who they are. But it is, for three years, what they have been.

The potential remains unfulfilled. The goodbyes remain pained.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

Twitter: @billplaschke