LOS ANGELES — There’s always next year.

After Friday’s 105-101 loss to New Orleans in the Western Conference’s final play-in game on Friday night, the Clippers will have 2022-23 to look forward to, when they expect to have All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George playing, hopefully healthy after missing all or most of this season, respectively.

But the 2021-22 Clippers proved a tough out.

It was a play-in journey that began with a blown lead and tough loss against their old pal Patrick Beverley in Minnesota. That set up a must-win game at home against a Pelicans team that has given them fits over the past couple of seasons – without George, who was ruled out Friday morning in accordance with the NBA’s health and safety protocols.

And then, to add an extra degree of difficulty to the task, the Clippers fell into a 16-point hole, falling behind to the sizable Pelicans squad by 45-29 with 7:11 left in the second quarter.

Right where they wanted them, in other words.

But this time, the Clippers couldn’t hang on, finally succumbing at Crypto.com Arena, where the Pelicans – who began the season 1-12 – earned a date with the top-seeded Phoenix Suns in a best-of-seven first-round series. That series begins Sunday night.

If they’d held on, the Clippers could have had their 15th successful rally from a double-digit deficit this season.

It’s been that kind of season for the Clippers, who haven’t had Leonard a five-time All-Star, at all because of a torn ACL, and had George, a seven-time All-Star, for only 31 games after he was taken out by a torn elbow ligament.

That bad news about George’s injury came on Christmas, word of Norman Powell’s broken foot on Super Bowl Sunday and, on Friday morning, hours before their do-or-die game against New Orleans, the world learned that they’d have to survive to advance without George (health and safety) – the last blow doing them in.

The Clippers had players miss a combined 345 games (the second-most in the league), and, per spotrac.com, they paid $74,069,847 to those unavailable players (by far, the most in the NBA).

The Clippers finished the regular season 42-40 and in eighth place in the Western Conference, six games ahead of ninth-place New Orleans (36-46). That would have been enough for the Clippers to wrap up a postseason berth just two seasons ago, before the introduction of the play-in tournament, which ushered the seventh- through 10th-place finishers into a bracket playing for their postseason lives, regardless of record.

In their season-ending loss, the Clippers got 27 points apiece from Reggie Jackson and Marcus Morris Sr., 17 from newcomer Norman Powell and 14 from Robert Covington.

Nicolas Batum played stellar defense, and despite shooting 1 for 7 from the field, finished plus-11 in the box score.

More to come on this story.