Warriors survive Clippers
Golden State erased a second‑half deficit to beat the Los Angeles Clippers 126–121 on April 15, eliminating L.A. from the play‑in tournament and extending the Warriors’ season. (usatoday.com). Steph Curry carried the late load despite an injury narrative in social clips, and the team now travels to Phoenix on Friday, April 17 for a winner‑takes‑the‑No. 8 seed game. (nba.com) (x.com)
Golden State kept its season alive Wednesday night, closing on a 16-6 run to beat the Los Angeles Clippers 126-121 in Inglewood. (nba.com) Stephen Curry scored 35 points, with 27 after halftime, and his seventh three-pointer broke a tie with 50.4 seconds left. Al Horford added four three-pointers in the fourth quarter as Golden State erased a 13-point deficit. (espn.com) The Clippers led 98-85 with 9:53 to play, but Golden State’s late burst flipped the game. Kawhi Leonard scored 21 points, Bennedict Mathurin had 23, and Darius Garland finished with 21 points and eight assists for Los Angeles. (nba.com) The result ended the Clippers’ season in the National Basketball Association play-in tournament, where the No. 9 and No. 10 teams face immediate elimination. Golden State, the No. 10 seed in the Western Conference, now gets one more elimination game for the conference’s No. 8 playoff spot. (nba.com) That next game is Friday, April 17, at Phoenix against the No. 7 seed Suns. The winner advances to the 2026 National Basketball Association playoffs and opens the first round against defending champion Oklahoma City. (nba.com) For Golden State, the comeback extended a season that ended 37-45 in the regular season and lost Jimmy Butler for the year in January. Curry had returned only five games earlier from a 27-game absence with a knee injury. (espn.com) For the Clippers, the loss capped a slide from No. 8 to No. 9 after late-season defeats to Portland forced them into the tougher side of the play-in bracket. Los Angeles finished 42-40 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2022. (espn.com) Golden State had also lost the regular-season series to Los Angeles 3-1 and had not won a road game against the Clippers since November 28, 2021, before Wednesday’s rally. The rematch turned a matchup that had favored Los Angeles into a one-possession game in the final minute. (nba.com) Now the Warriors head to Phoenix with the same margin for error they faced in Inglewood: lose once, and the season ends. Win Friday, and the comeback over the Clippers becomes the bridge into the playoffs. (nba.com)
