On Wednesday, the Houston Rockets made a huge move, trading for Los Angeles Clippers star point guard Chris Paul in exchange for a package that included seven players, a protected 2018 first-round draft pick and cash.

Paul basically forced the Clippers' hand because he said he was going to opt out of his contract with Los Angeles and become a free agent. Instead, CP3 opted in, but was traded to the Rockets.

Now, the Clippers are left to pick up the pieces and try to find a way to remain competitive when the 2017-18 season tips off this fall.

Clippers coach and team president Doc Rivers said he's disappointed Paul broke up the Big 3 of him, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, but told ESPN.com that the Clippers would continue their pursuit of an NBA title without him:

"That part is over. And that bugs me," Rivers said in an interview with ESPN. "But we're not done trying to reach our goal. Sometimes you gotta do it a different way. Because the way we tried to do it didn't work."

Now, the Clippers will try to make sure star forward Blake Griffin doesn't also leave in free agency, which would throw Los Angeles into a full-on rebuilding process.

Rivers said he wishes the Clippers had caught a few more breaks the past four years, but added that he didn't think LA's championship window had closed just yet:

"We were close, and then we had self-inflicted wounds," he said. "You would love to get those back but you don't get that back. But it's not like it was awful. And that's the point. We were a game away from the Western finals [the 2015 playoff series against Houston] and we were three minutes of basketball away against Oklahoma [a 2014 playoff series in which Paul had several costly turnovers in the final minutes of Game 5].

"We were knocking on the door of being very successful, and we just didn't get it done."

The Clippers earned the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference this season, but fell in the first round to the Utah Jazz in seven games - another disappointingly early exit from the postseason for Paul and his teammates.

Now, CP3 will head to Houston, where he'll team up with star guard James Harden to form one of the NBA's best backcourt tandems.

Meanwhile, Rivers and the Clippers will try to make sure they position themselves to stay in the playoff hunt as free agency begins when the calendar flips to July.