HOUSTON — Klay Thompson was euphoric when the final buzzer sounded, hopping everywhere like a kid in a bounce house, high-fiving owner Joe Lacob and a series of Warriors officials. He grunted on his way into the locker room, yelling, “Come on, man!” after hugging Draymond Green.

Klay dressed, but he was still buzzing, pacing back and forth in between brief respites. When asked about the intense celebration, Klay responded, “Why? Because that shit was hard.”

It certainly wasn’t easy and Las Vegas apparently agreed. The oddsmakers had made the Warriors seven-point underdogs in Kevin Durant’s absence. Yet the Warriors saw this through, led by the Splash Brothers, but operating as a whole greater than the sum. Necessary contributions came from everywhere on Friday night. Kevon Looney, Shaun Livingston and Jordan Bell all had significant contributions. As an ecstatic Lacob said in the hallway, “They say we don’t have a bench. That … is … bullshit! You can quote me!”

The entire Warriors organization was in a frenzy, hugs and high-fives all around. Durant had gotten in on the action, FaceTiming Bob Myers his congratulations with 30 seconds remaining in the game.

After much revelry, all but two Warriors eventually exited the locker room. It was just Steph Curry and Thompson, the Splash Brothers, founding first-rounders in what’s turned into an enduring dynasty. Steph was getting treatment on his left hand and Klay was waiting for his press conference.

As Steph sat on the trainer’s table, Klay paced and paced, still channeling the adrenaline from one the best wins of his career. Then, his energy waned, so he did the only natural thing, or at least the only natural thing if you’re Klay: He stacked towels on the ground and plopped down on his back, using the bunched cloth as pillows for his makeshift bed on the locker room floor. “Ah man, I’m tired,” he said. “Heart rate’s finally down. I need a Red Bull.”

Then Klay sprouted wings absent caffeinated carbonation, leaping up and shouting, “Let’s freaking go!” as he bounded past the catering tray.

Steph screamed back at him from the trainer’s table, “Yeah, Klay!”

Klay jumped to a stop, and in a winking poke at the wild swings in assessment of his two-time MVP teammate, he pointed at Steph: “Hey, Steph! You suck you’re great!” There was no pause between, “you suck” and “you’re great,” which more or less captures what it was like to experience Curry’s game through social media.

Steph’s reputation was taking a real-time beating after he had failed to score in the first half. He’d looked better in the third quarter, but by the fourth he was dragging. With six minutes left in the action, Steph looked over at his father Dell in stands and told him, “I’m spent.” It had been a rough outing.

His father’s faith was not shaken, though. “I know he has that mental toughness man,” Dell said of his son. “He’d been there before. Everybody’s tired. Then you realize you have a chance to win. That’s when you make a shot. A couple more plays. It sounds difficult, but it’s really not.”

Or it is difficult, but the great ones use that light at the end of the tunnel as a compass. Dell said, “After Game 5, I texted Steph, ‘If it was easy. It wouldn’t be any fun.’ When you win, that’s what makes it so gratifying. Because it’s so freaking hard.”

For Steph, through much of the action, the game looked hard. He missed shots at the rim, he was grimacing through pain and he’d picked up three first-half fouls. For Steve Kerr and many Warriors fans, those fouls were the frustrating result of risks better avoided. But with Steph, you take the great with the maddening. There’s nothing Kerr can do about Curry’s fouling tendency. Fortunately for Kerr, when Steph revs into the mode he seized at the end of Game 6, there’s nothing the Rockets can do about him, either. Curry ended the Rockets with an array of drives and highly contested 3s. They did their best, but he was better. In between shots, he held his left hand. Steph was hurt, but when the clock hit zero, the Rockets hurt worse.

What seems inevitable in retrospect is often only made possible by painful striving. Klay’s dagger 3 with 36.1 seconds was like that. The shot was in rhythm, set up by logical passes. But in that play was a microcosm of the series. It was a struggle to get to that end point. Steph tried to set a screen for Klay, to little avail. Klay’s ball-screen pass to Draymond Green didn’t create any separation. Then Steph got the ball and a Draymond screen. P.J. Tucker and Eric Gordon jumped him, causing Steph to lurch backward. Then, as he’d so often done in this series, Draymond found the right angle for Steph to pass him the ball in a 4-on-3 situation. Draymond kicked to Andre Iguodala, who kicked it to Klay. “I knew it was down,” said Klay from his locker-room floor bed.

When taking in the locker room revelry, the shouting and the high-fives, you had to remind yourself that this was just the Western Conference semifinals.

“This is the best win I’ve been a part of as a Golden State Warrior,” said Andrew Bogut, who’s seen some good ones. “Obviously, we won a championship, but as far as a one-game win, this one was from start to finish amazing, especially after the emotional low of losing Kevin for God knows how long. And to come in here, in a hostile environment, with a team that’s spoken about building their roster to beat us for the past couple years, it was amazing. It was just so hard.”

Iguodala, who played spectacularly, thought the Warriors drew off being doubted and challenged. “The noise, the noise, there’s so much noise now,” he said. “It’s pretty crazy now. It feels like more than it needs to be. It’s almost like you can feel the hate coming from the other side. It’s not that deep, to be honest. It’s just basketball. But that’s the fun part. When someone really, really really want to take something away from you.” He mused, “It’s interesting being counted out.”

On Friday night, the Warriors looked like they missed being counted out, in a way they just couldn’t when blessed with Durant’s cheat-code fadeaway. They missed being tested and missed prevailing over the pain and uncertainty. That’s why victory was so sweet in Houston. As John F. Kennedy said in that very same city, back in 1962, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

(Photo: Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images)