OAKLAND, Calif. — It was Stephen Curry, of course, who sent the nervous energy through the doors and into the cool night, turning anxiety into relief and a bit of hope.  Curry dashed down the lane, twisted past one Oklahoma City defender and under another, leapt and moved the ball from his left hand to his right and scooped it into the basket for the clinching layup that led his Golden State Warriors to a victory over the Thunder.  The Warriors had a 10-point lead with 62 seconds left.  “We ain’t going home!” Curry repeatedly shouted into a frenzied crowd.  No, the Warriors are not. They are headed to Oklahoma again.  Trying to punctuate the best regular season in N.B.A. history with a championship, the Warriors staved off playoff elimination with a 120-111 victory Thursday over Oklahoma City in Game 5 of the Western Conference finals.  Golden State still trails the best-of-seven series, three games to two. Game 6 is Saturday in Oklahoma City. Should the Warriors manage a victory there, a decisive Game 7 would be played in Oakland on Monday.  Curry, named to the all-N.B.A. first team earlier in the day, led the Warriors with 31 points. He also had 7 rebounds and 6 assists. But he would not have been in position to clinch the game without plenty of help.  After three quarters of wrangling with the Thunder, Golden State opened the fourth quarter with an 8-0 run as Curry and Klay Thompson rested on the bench.  Harrison Barnes’s 3-pointer from the top of the key, after jumpers from Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston, lifted the lead to 12.  Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant had a game-high 40 points, and Russell Westbrook had 31 points, 7 rebounds and 8 assists. Unlike the Warriors, they were unable to get the kind of support from teammates that had carried them to within one victory of the N.B.A. finals.  The Warriors were 73-9 in the regular season, and their path toward a second consecutive N.B.A. title was smooth until the Thunder arrived after upsetting the 67-win San Antonio Spurs in the conference semifinals.  In their first two playoff series, the Warriors beat Houston and then Portland, each in five games. But Oklahoma City upset Golden State in Game 1 at Oracle Arena, where the Warriors were 39-2 in the regular season, a foreboding sign for home fans expecting a championship coronation after a record-breaking season.  The Warriors won Game 2 when Curry erupted for 15 points in 1 minute 58 seconds of the third quarter, the kind of spirit-sapping spurt that has crushed most opponents, amazed fans and left Coach Steve Kerr shrugging with a wry smile.  But Curry, the two-time league most valuable player, spent Games 3 and 4 in a virtual straitjacket, finding his 3-pointers contested and his passing and dribbling lanes clogged by quick-footed defenders with long arms. Unable to break free, and with little support from Golden State’s usually reliable and deep cast, the Warriors were shellacked twice in Oklahoma City, by a combined 52 points, their first back-to-back losses in more than a year.  The Warriors hoped to regain their confidence in front of their usually raucous, yellow-shirted fans at Oracle Arena. In N.B.A. playoff history, the 232 teams that have trailed a best-of-seven series by 3-1 have come back to win just nine times. The Warriors figured they could be the 10th, with two of the potential three games at home.  Kerr sent a note, via email, to Golden State’s season-ticket holders on Wednesday, reminding them of the stakes and their role in the team’s success.  “Tomorrow night we face our first must win game of the season,” he wrote. “We are excited to be back on Warriors Ground, playing in front of the best fans in the N.B.A., and we will do whatever it takes to reach the goal we have been fighting for all season.”  The Warriors took a lead on the game’s first possession with Barnes’s 3-pointer. By halftime the score was 58-50, and the Warriors had 16 assists, one more than the 15 they had in all of Game 4.  The Warriors, as they usually do, got unpredictable contributions (power forward Marreese Speights scored 9 points in the second quarter, more than his per-game average), spun the offense around center Andrew Bogut (15 points, 14 rebounds) and got the biggest lifts from Curry.  Curry missed games earlier in the postseason with a sprained knee, but never said whether the injury affected him against the Thunder.  “It hasn’t been the ideal postseason for Steph, with the injuries and the starts and stops to his playoff run, but it doesn’t matter,” Kerr said before the game. “You know, everyone deals with stuff.”  But the Thunder, who have had promising postseasons crumble with injuries in recent years, rumbled back. When Golden State’s Draymond Green fouled Durant on a missed 3-point shot, he argued the call and received a technical foul. Durant made four free throws to pull the Thunder to 3 behind.  Curry recovered Golden State’s momentum with a 3-pointer from the left corner. Green blocked shots on two possessions, and Curry assisted on a fast-break give-and-go with Thompson to give the Warriors a thin cushion, but hardly a comfortable one.  Oklahoma City, sticking close on defense and on the scoreboard, took its first lead, 68-67, on Westbrook’s 3-pointer from the left wing with 6:07 left in the third quarter. Most fans stood for the rest of a dizzying third quarter as Curry and Green lifted the Warriors to an 81-77 lead entering the fourth quarter.  It was a precarious position for a record-setting team entering what threatened to be its final quarter of the season.  Now the question is whether the Warriors have played their last home game.  A version of this article appears in print on May 27, 2016, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Against Wall, Warriors Stay Alive. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Golden State, which set an N.B.A. record for regular-season wins, still faces ouster from the playoffs in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals in Oklahoma City on Saturday.