OKLAHOMA CITY — After his avalanche of 3-pointers had filled Chesapeake Energy Arena with silence, Klay Thompson left the court and was greeted in a corridor by Joe Lacob, the owner of the Golden State Warriors, who bowed before him. A few minutes later, Thompson sat at his locker and tried to decompress.  Thompson sounded like a teakettle, and the water was still boiling. In his case, it was the slow release of adrenaline — the electric residue from what he described as the greatest game of his life, a season-saving victory against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Saturday night.  The Warriors, having twice avoided elimination in the series, will host the Thunder on Monday for Game 7 of the Western Conference finals. The Cleveland Cavaliers, who are waiting to learn the identity of their opponent in the N.B.A. finals, must be enjoying their view from a safe distance: two worthy candidates, smashing each other to smithereens.  Thompson, a 6-foot-7 shooting guard with a swan-like release, was brilliant in Game 6. He set an N.B.A. playoff record by sinking 11-pointers, and the Warriors, after trailing for much of the game and by as many as 8 points in the fourth quarter, needed all of them in a 108-101 victory.  His competitive embers still smoldering after the game, Thompson revealed that he had a couple of regrets. By his estimation, he should have finished with 13 3-pointers. Only the most demanding technician could come up with such an exact figure. But it was a window into his psyche. The Warriors are a team of perfectionists.  “I missed some wide-open looks early,” Thompson said.  The Warriors won the game and extended the series by shooting 21 of 44 from 3-point range. The Thunder, on the other hand, shot 3 of 23 from the 3-point line. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook combined to shoot 20 of 58 from the field, ensuring that a familiar phrase — hero ball — would trail the Thunder like a toxic stench on their trip back to Oracle Arena.  Here were two teams that took different paths through the final minutes of Game 6. The Warriors produced quality shots with screens, cuts and passes. They looked for the open man. They trusted one another to make the right decisions. In basketball, a pass is the greatest form of trust.  “The biggest thing,” Stephen Curry said, “is just moving the ball and moving bodies, setting screens for each other, trying to create confusion and miscommunication on their end.”  Before the fourth quarter even started, Curry told Thompson that he would continue to look for him. Curry, the league’s two-time reigning most valuable player, tends to produce his finest basketball in late-game situations. But he could sense that Thompson was rolling.  “This is your time,” Thompson recalled Curry telling him. “Put on a show out there and have fun.”  Curry had his moments, too. He made consecutive 3-pointers to tie the game. Later, Thompson hit his fifth 3-pointer of the quarter to give the Warriors the lead for good. Curry cluttered the box score with 29 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists. Curry and Thompson have been teammates for five seasons, and it shows.  “It’s kind of just telepathic, playing with each other for so long,” Thompson said. “You just kind of feel it when someone’s on their shot or being aggressive.”  As Billy Donovan, the coach of the Thunder, observed, “It wasn’t like Steph was just going one-on-one.”  If the Thunder were discombobulated on defense — and they were, no doubt — they were even more unkempt on offense. After showcasing so much teamwork throughout the playoffs, the Thunder relapsed and settled for isolation sets. Durant and Westbrook searched for seams by dribbling in jagged lines. Westbrook had an especially difficult time. He committed three turnovers in the final 55 seconds. So much dribbling. So many mistakes. So many questions ahead of Game 7.  At his postgame news conference, Donovan used the word “stagnant” no fewer than three times. Once upon a time, his team led this series by three games to one.  “You go 13 percent from the 3-point line and they go 47, that’s a huge discrepancy,” Donovan said, adding, “I thought we made some really positive strides over the last month and a half or since the playoffs started, but I thought we got a little stagnant offensively, no question.”  The Warriors played a different game. Of their eight 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, six came off assists. One that did not? Thompson measuring up Westbrook from 28 feet, and then launching a twisting heave that fell through to cut into the Thunder’s lead. It was not his most high-percentage shot.  “That was the only one all night that I thought, What are you doing?” Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said. “But that’s the beauty of Steph and Klay. They kind of walk that fine line between lethal and crazy, and we have to live with some crazy shots and some crazy misses because they make more than their fair share.”  Thompson argued that his feet were set and that he had a strong base beneath him. In other words, he felt confident.  Thompson went on to explain that he thinks of the game as a process, describing himself as a “continuous player.” Rather than dwell on individual possessions — the makes, the misses — he searches for his place within the game’s broader rhythms. So he works with his teammates, feeding off them, trusting them.  For one game, at least, it was enough to outlast an opponent that looked more like a collection of disassembled parts.  A version of this article appears in print on May 30, 2016, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Warriors Put Trust in 3-Pointers, and One Another. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Golden State’s Klay Thompson fed off his teammates in helping to forge a Game 7 against the Thunder.