NBA PLAYOFFS : Clippers Go for Next Step : Game 5: Whichever team shows up against Rockets today, at least they know they can win in Houston.

To Game 5 they go, the Clippers and Rockets and Clippers and Rockets in the last dance at the schizophrenics’ ball.

The teams facing off today at the Summit at 10 a.m. PDT in the deciding game of their first-round series have split personalities: the Rockets who won all four regular-season meetings and then Games 1 and 3, and the Clippers who took Games 2 and 4.

Trying to pick a winner?

Get a coin.

“Like we have said all season, when we play as good as we can, we can beat any team out there,” said Clipper point guard Mark Jackson, averaging 17 points and 7.3 assists the first four games. “But we also have nights where if we don’t play well enough, any team can beat us. I really can’t explain it.”

That Clipper trademark is at once worrisome and encouraging. It is why, at the end of the regular season, they struggled to get past Golden State when Tim Hardaway didn’t play the fourth quarter, and then lost to Denver. Both are lottery teams. But it also is what has kept them in the series all the way to a deciding fifth game. Most of all, it is why they finished 41-41 and are 2-2 in postseason play.

The Rockets, the Midwest Division champions, easily won Game 1, 117-94. They needed a little less than 10 minutes to build a 10-point cushion. They led by as many as 25 points. They shot 62.7%. Then, two nights later . . .

. . . a vastly improved Clipper defense held Houston to 31.5% and only 23 baskets, the second-fewest in NBA playoff history, and the Clippers won, 95-83.

Hakeem Olajuwon went six for 19 and took only seven shots in the second half. The Clippers broke a 15-game losing streak at the Summit and seized home-court advantage and momentum and returned to the Sports Arena to . . .

. . . lose Game 3, 111-99. The Rockets in the third quarter led by as many as 21 points and never fewer than 12, and it took a Clipper surge to get them as close as 11 midway through the fourth quarter. Houston shot 53.7%. Stanley Roberts had a scoreless 18 minutes before fouling out. With elimination another bad showing away . . .

. . . the Clippers got 20 points and 13 rebounds from Roberts and won Game 4 at the Sports Arena, 93-90. They won three of the four quarters, despite shooting no better than 42.3% in any. They committed a season-low six turnovers, tying for the third-fewest in NBA playoff history.

Which brings them to today, standing at the brink of a first-round Game 5 defeat for the second consecutive season, or advancement to the second round, there to meet Seattle or Utah. On the brink either of their potential or an off-season that promises to be more treacherous than trying to contain Olajuwon with one-on-one defense.

The Clippers know this much, at least: It was 6 1/2 years between road victories over the Rockets, but the last time they were in Houston, they won. One roadblock, even if only of the mental variety, dispatched.

“It’s a lot better knowing we’re not on one of those long Clipper streaks we’ve had, about not winning since 1913 in Charlotte or whatever,” Coach Larry Brown said. “A lot of people brought it up to me that we had lost 15 in a row (at the Summit). I think it’s got to help. I think it also helps that we were in a fifth-game situation last year at Utah and that we gave ourselves a chance to win.”

They didn’t, evaporating in the fourth quarter against 1992’s Midwest champions. Memories of that night in Salt Lake City linger with the Clippers to this day.

“I keep reflecting on what Ron (Harper) said after we lost Game 5 to Utah,” Brown said. “We let that feeling sink in after the game and then met the next day. Harp said, ‘We’ve come a long way, we’d gotten into the playoffs and we gave ourselves a chance to win. Let’s remember this feeling now and not let it happen again.’ ”

So, today, they try not to.

“It was a very lonely feeling after Game 5,” Harper recalled. “Even though we had played well and played hard, there was still a feeling that we had more of the season left.”

And in 1993?

“We think we still have more to prove,” Harper said. “And we do.”