OKLAHOMA CITY — Amid the steady drumbeat of an arena rooting for him to fail, Klay Thompson refused to let the Golden State Warriors fade away. With his team facing elimination from the N.B.A. playoffs for the second time in three nights, Thompson spotted up from the 3-point line and carried his team.
On Saturday night, the Warriors prolonged their season-long quest for a second straight N.B.A. championship by defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder, 108-101, in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals.
Thompson, so often overshadowed by Stephen Curry, scored 41 points as the Warriors tied the series at three games apiece, forcing a Game 7, set for Monday night in Oakland, Calif. Thompson sank 11 of 18 3-point attempts, and Curry added 29 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists.
“I don’t think there could be any more pressure on us in Game 7 than there was tonight,” Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said.
The game was an all-consuming nightmare for the Thunder’s Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Durant finished with 29 points but shot 10 of 31 from the field. Westbrook was only marginally more accurate, scoring 28 points while shooting 10 of 27.
The Thunder, who were 3 of 23 from 3-point range, will have one more chance to advance to their first N.B.A. finals since 2012.
The Thunder took an 8-point lead into the fourth quarter and kept trying to build on it. But Thompson refused to let them pull away. His fourth 3-pointer of the quarter cut Oklahoma City’s lead to 4. Curry later drained back-to-back 3-pointers to tie the game, 99-99.
“We didn’t draw a whole lot up that created shots for them,” Kerr said of Thompson and Curry. “They were mostly just kind of playing the way they play.”
With less than two minutes to play, the Warriors’ Andre Iguodala stripped Westbrook of the ball and found Thompson in a comfortable spot, behind the 3-point line. It might as well have been a layup. The Warriors were up by 3, and the crowd fell silent.
“It was one of those nights where you make a few easy looks,” Thompson said, “and then you take those 30-footers with your feet not set and they just happen to keep going in.”
Later, after the Thunder had forced a rare miss by Thompson, Westbrook threw the ball away — one of three turnovers he committed in the final 55 seconds. The Warriors’ Draymond Green, who collected 14 points and 12 rebounds, scored to seal the victory.
“I thought we got a little stagnant coming down the stretch,” Thunder Coach Billy Donovan said.
At the start of the night, the Warriors must have felt as if they were walking into the world’s loudest mausoleum. They had lost Games 3 and 4 here by a combined 52 points. It was the first time the Warriors had lost consecutive games this season, and they did not merely lose; they were roasted.
“We knew what we got ourselves into after Game 4,” Green said.
Kerr had recognized that the Thunder had too much length and too much size for him to employ his favored small lineup, in which Green slides from forward to center. So when the Warriors returned home for Game 5, Kerr went big and planted Andrew Bogut in the post. It helped that Bogut avoided foul trouble, and the Warriors won to ensure a trip back to Oklahoma City.
Before Game 6, Kerr acknowledged that more pressure might be on the Thunder. They had a chance to close out the series at home, and while Durant and Westbrook had endured their share of pressure cookers, this opportunity — 48 minutes from the finals — was still slightly foreign.
The Warriors had been tested — tested last season, when they won their first title in 40 years; tested without Curry, whose injuries in the first round scrambled their rhythm; and tested just days ago, when they avoided elimination for the first time. On Saturday, the Warriors were hoping for more of the same.
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