It was one of those classic “too good to be true” stories. It involved the Clippers. So of course it was. Too good to be true.

A week after come to terms with Baron Davis, adding a blue-chip point guard to the Clippers lineup, the team apparently has lost its best interior player, Elton Brand, to the same free-agency process. To the Philadelphia 76ers, for five years and about $81 million.

And now the Clippers are back to where they started. A potentially interesting club. But not one you expect to see in the playoffs.

It had to be a giddy few days there, for Clippers fans. A real team. With a real star. The playoffs a strong possibility. A deep run in the playoffs at least a potentiality.

Then it came undone. Which at least is not a new sensation for that handful of wretches who consider themselves serious Clippers fans.

We figured the club would lose Corey Maggette, and apparently it has. But that would have been an acceptable trade: The erratic and fairly selfish Maggette for Baron Davis.

It would have been acceptable as long as the Clippers kept Brand, their career 20-and-10 (points and rebounds) guy and, before now, the embodiment of that rarest of Clippers franchise commodities, “competent class.” They thought they could keep him at something a bit below the market cost … because he had some odd devotion to this benighted franchise.

But now Brand has left the building, and who the Clippers get to play the “4” spot is anybody’s guess. (Josh Smith? Emeka Okafor? They do have money to spend, if they have the heart to get over Brand’s rejection.)

What we know for sure is that they are certainly a diminished team from the one Clippers fans perhaps allowed themselves to consider, just last week.

Is it any consolation that the Clippers, even without Brand and Maggette, might be more entertaining? Well, if you stipulate that “losing” is what this franchise does, perhaps a few more exciting plays makes it all more palatable.

But, in the end, even Clippers fans would trade 50 victories and a date in the playoffs for highlight-reel stuff from Baron Davis.

So, yeah, let the depression roll over you, Clipperdom. It’s more of the same. I’d feel worse for them, but Clippers fans know disappointment like almost no one else.