Well, this is embarrassing. Not that the Los Angeles Clippers are strangers to embarrassment.

The best team the Clippers have had, the team that fell one victory short of the Western Conference finals, just saw their third-best player, 7-foot center DeAndre Jordan, leave for the Dallas Mavericks.

–For $20 million less than the Clippers presumably offered.

–Apparently because the coach and personnel chief, Doc Rivers, and the team couldn’t be bothered to make maybe the third-best center in the game, feel loved.

The Clippers the past few seasons have been a three-pronged threat: Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and Jordan, the big guy.

No, he didn’t make his free throws, which led to the “hack-a-Dre” strategy, more annoying than damaging.

But he made 71 percent of his shots and led the NBA in rebounds, at 15 per game, and added two blocks per game.

And you do not players like that go.

Maybe Rivers will try to suggest the Clippers thought Jordan, and his 11.5-points-per-game scoring average, were dispensable. He shouldn’t say that, because that is silly, but how else to explain the inexplicable?

Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavericks, apparently sold Jordan on his being “Shaq-like” in Dallas — someone who not only protects the rim and takes rebounds off it, but is a primary force in the offense at the other end, like Shaquille O’Neal.

Cuban also said, on radio, that Jordan was something like “the eighth option” for the Clippers when they had the ball. Which was an exaggeration, but not far off, and probably resonated with Jordan.

Now, the Clippers are Griffin and Paul. Which is a nice place to start, but they now have less help, and they don’t have the big guy behind them at the rim.

Jordan was a free agent and, by NBA rules, would have to take less money to leave his previous team. The Clippers could have offered him $100 million — and the 26-year-old veteran was so keen to leave he is willing to sign for $80 million with the Mavericks.

The only way the embarrassment can be mitigated is if Jordan goes to his press conference in Dallas in the next day or three and says he wanted out of Los Angeles. That it wasn’t about the Clippers. It was about the city and the lifestyle.

Jordan is known as being a religious man, and if he says “the city was wicked” or something like that, we might think he’s a little nutty, but that gives the Clippers a chance to say, “Hey, it wasn’t about us being asleep at the switch … it wasn’t about us letting our relationship with him decay to the point he wanted out.”

This is no longer the team of Donald Sterling, but losing Jordan feels like something that would have happened were Sterling and Elgin Baylor running things. When players couldn’t wait to get out of Clipperville.

This could be the first big step towards the Clippers returning to the sad-sacks they were for so many decades. Griffin can leave after the 2016-17 season. Chris Paul is 30.

Look out below.