Chris Paul looked awfully emotional when he left Monday night’s win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, kicking a chair as he left the court and yelling as he made his way back to the locker room. At first, it seemed the outburst might have been a bit premature. Now, though, we might know why the All-Star point guard blew his top in a manner similar to his exit from Game 4 of the 2016 Western Conference playoffs last April; maybe he had a feeling that, as was the case then, he was going to be on the shelf for a while.

[Join a Yahoo Daily Fantasy Basketball contest now | Free NBA Yahoo Cup entry]

The Los Angeles Clippers announced Tuesday that Paul needs surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left thumb, a procedure that will leave Doc Rivers’ club without its primary playmaker for the next six to eight weeks, according to Rowan Kavner of Clippers.com:

Paul, who will undergo surgery Wednesday, left Monday’s game against the Thunder with a sprained left thumb and didn’t return. Initial X-rays showed no break, but further tests Tuesday morning revealed the tear, which occurred after Paul jammed his left hand on Russell Westbrook’s right leg in the second quarter.

Paul went around a Joffrey Lauvergne screen while chasing Westbrook, who jumped into Paul while attempting to draw a foul on a 3-point attempt. Immediately after the play, a frustrated Paul walked straight to the locker room with head athletic trainer Jasen Powell.

Head coach Doc Rivers said he didn’t see the injury as it happened, but he knew the kind of injury Paul sustained from playing the position and seeing Paul favor his left hand after the play.

“That’s the one injury we get,” Rivers said Monday night. “You know the pain. I’m sure CP was thinking the worst at the time. He’s already got pretty good news with the normal X-ray being negative. You’ve just got to hope for the best.”

What they got instead falls far, far short of “the best” — life without one of the game’s best point guards for somewhere between 17 and 25 games. That promises to be a fairly unpleasant life for the Clippers, who enter Tuesday’s play at 29-14, just two games ahead of the Utah Jazz in the hunt for the No. 4 seed — and home-court advantage — in the Western Conference playoff race.

Making matters worse: the Clips’ upcoming slate during the timeframe of Paul’s expected absence includes a pair of five-game road trips, highlighted by tough road contests against the Golden State Warriors, Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors and Jazz, plus Staples Center visits from the Warriors, San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets. If Rivers can’t keep his crew on solid ground without its foreman, L.A. could soon find itself slipping not only out of the top half of the Western bracket, but all the way down to its lower reaches. The Thunder and Memphis Grizzlies and Thunder, who are tied for the sixth and seventh slots right now, are just four games behind the Clippers, and could be poised to seize the opportunity presented by Paul’s injury. (Barring something catastrophic happening, it’s just about impossible to imagine L.A. falling out of the top eight entirely, given that the West’s final playoff spot is currently held by the 18-25 Portland Trail Blazers.)

As our Eric Freeman noted on Monday, the Clippers simply don’t have another tablesetter who can “reasonably approximate Paul’s impact on both ends of the floor,” even if playmaking power forward Blake Griffin — sidelined since Dec. 19 after having arthroscopic surgery on his right knee — returns to the lineup soon.

That’s not to say that getting Griffin back in the fold to act as a from-the-elbows offensive initiator and ostensible point forward wouldn’t help soften the blow. When CP3 missed just over a month with a shoulder sprain during the 2013-14 season, Griffin stepped into the void and played some of the best basketball of his career, averaging 27.5 points on 55.4 percent shooting to go with 8.2 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.4 steals in 35.6 minutes per game over an 18-game stretch, during which L.A. went 12-6.

The January 2014 version of Griffin wasn’t coming off knee surgery, though. While Rivers said Monday that Griffin “looks like he’s explosive again” as he works on his rehabilitation, according to Dan Woike of the Orange County Register, and he “is planning on traveling with the team on the upcoming three-game trip that begins Saturday” against the Denver Nuggets, Griffin has yet to be cleared for contact, and hasn’t played in a game in nearly a month. Expecting him to step right in and pick up where CP3 left off seems an awfully big ask — and perhaps flat-out unrealistic, because there’s just no substitute for what the nine-time All-Star brings to the Clippers.