OAKLAND, CALIF.—“Halfway home,” said a voice in the winning locker room, as the post-game chaos swirled. The Toronto Raptors had just spent a game pinning down an injury-plagued Golden State Warriors team, answering their runs, batting them around without knocking them out until the end. By the end, Steph Curry had been magical, a force of nature. And the Toronto Raptors were two wins from a championship.

“So it is what it is, with the guys we got out there, we got to roll with it,” said Golden State’s Draymond Green, who played 41 minutes in Toronto’s 123-109 win in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. “We fought tonight. We lost. We’re going to fight again. I don’t really see us losing too many more, though, but we’re going to fight again. So it is what it is.”

The Warriors can only afford one more, and the series is nearly Toronto’s to lose. Golden State went all-in on superstars in 2016, adding Kevin Durant and sacrificing depth from a 73-win team that blew a 3-1 lead in the Finals; they had lost one game in two Finals since, until this year. Now, they have lost two. With Durant still out with his strained right calf, and Klay Thompson sidelined by a left hamstring strain, Curry went for 47 points on 31 shots, eight rebounds, seven assists, six threes. And it wasn’t nearly enough.

“Any injury in the playoffs is tough, but especially a guy like Klay who’s been so durable his whole career and especially in the playoffs, and the way he had been playing as of late,” said Curry. “So it’s no secret that we’re a little injury-plagued now.

“We can play better, obviously better on the defensive end, but I liked the competitiveness that we had, understanding that we’re missing 50 points pretty much between K.D. and Klay. So we’ll adjust. And it’s a long series, you know. It’s going to be fun for us.”

Maybe it’s the justifiable confidence of champions, or maybe he and Draymond are trying to talk themselves into it. Curry has expanded basketball’s galaxy, flying beyond the sport’s known horizon, shooting in ways nobody else can. Steve Nash once said he wished he had seen Steph play when Nash was young, so he would have known how it was possible to play the game.

But he is one man, and with the Raptors finally making their shots Golden State couldn’t ride him all the way. Not with Thompson and Durant hurt; not with Draymond an all-time glue guy who can’t create his own offence; not with DeMarcus Cousins resembling an iceberg. Curry never gets to sit at basketball’s all-you-can-eat buffet, but he got the chance here. He had 17 points in the first quarter, plus assists on three of the other four Warriors baskets — 47 was a playoff career high.

Still, there are limits to elasticity. Even the Warriors can stretch until they break.

“It was a lot of pressure. It’s a lot of pressure, too. If one of the main guys is not playing, they can still come out and get a win,” said Kawhi Leonard, who scored 21 of his 30 after halftime, one fewer than Curry. “Steph played great tonight, but it was big. I’m happy we got it. Two wins away now, and let’s see what this momentum carries us to.”

They are very close. The Warriors never went away, but they also led once, at 5-4, for 17 seconds. The Raptors answered every run. Kyle Lowry finally had his all-everything performance; Danny Green finally made his shots; every Raptors starter scored at least 17, and Fred VanVleet played all but 51 seconds of the second half, chasing Curry and hitting big shots of his own.

Curry was still great, but Toronto wasn’t losing to Andrew Bogut, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston and Quinn Cook. Thompson is an all-league defender, in addition to being the second-best shooter in the world, more or less. The Raptors will need more killer instinct than this in Game 4. They needed a win more.

In addition to the luxury tax and Durant realizing he can’t get everything he wants, attrition was always the rest of the NBA’s best hope in the Warriors superteam era. Durant’s Oklahoma City team had blown a 3-1 lead to Golden State the year before ESPN’s new TV deal money washed over the league. He’s a capricious soul, really. So he switched.

Going into Game 3, the Warriors had lost two games in the NBA Finals since. The combination of interlocking superstars made them invulnerable, except for the spectre of this particular Achilles heel. Or in Durant’s case, calf; in Thompson’s, hamstring. Sure, Achilles left hamstring doesn’t sound as foreboding as the mythical original, but you try running off screens and defending Kawhi with one.

And that’s after Warriors backup centre Kevon Looney fractured his collarbone on a Kawhi freight truck drive. The Houston Rockets were a Chris Paul pulled hamstring from perhaps beating the Warriors last season. It was the only time in the Durant era that you wondered if the Warriors could survive.

This is the second. Warriors coach Steve Kerr said Thompson pushed hard to play. But a hamstring isn’t a sprained ankle, and you can hurt it a lot worse if you’re not careful.

“Well, the whole point was to not risk a bigger injury that would keep him out of the rest of the series,” said Kerr. “So that was the decision we made, and I feel very comfortable with it. Never would have forgiven myself if I played him tonight and he had gotten hurt. So you live with the decision you make, you make a wise decision, the wisest one you can, and then you live with it and move forward.

“So the good thing is Klay has done well the last two days; now he has a couple more days to heal, and hopefully he’ll be out there on Friday.”

“I think wisdom prevailed in terms of this is a potentially seven-game series, and you would like to take advantage of tonight,” said Curry. “But his overall health is important in terms of not taking away the rest of the series with something catastrophic happening.”

How much of a risk remains? Durant, meanwhile, has been out a month with his strained right calf, and still hasn’t escalated beyond individual workouts. Kerr said those had increased in intensity — some witnesses said that in Toronto, Durant appeared to be going half-speed or so — and that they were hoping to move up Thursday.

“He had a really good workout yesterday, ramped it up, and it went well,” said Kerr before the game. “He had another one today, it went well. So we would like to increase it tomorrow, meaning get other people involved. He hasn’t played any three-on-three, five-on-five.

“We probably won’t practise as a team tomorrow. It will be a film session and a walk-through. So if possible, we’ll get him together with some of our young guys, maybe a few of our coaches and try to get him out on the floor. That would be the next step.”

Does that sound like someone likely to play Friday, after the only one-day gap between games in the entire series? Durant, like Thompson, is at risk of a full tear if he comes back too soon. Privately, the Raptors are skeptical that he will come back at all. Wishful thinking or not, it’s on the table.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

And now Game 4 will be here before anyone can take more than one deep breath. Maybe Durant comes back, out of game shape and without a real practice. Maybe Thompson’s ironman genes heal his hammy.

Regardless, Friday night Toronto has a chance to take near-full control of this series against the great wounded beast. Yes, Golden’s State’s missing stars could return. They are the champs. As one Raptors staffer put it, “now we’ll find out who’s really injured.”

But it’s still a completely open question as to whether Kawhi will return this summer, and an NBA championship has never been closer, and the Raptors may never get a better chance. This is the opportunity to push the Warriors to the edge. Toronto is coming at the kings. They best not miss.

Correction - June 6, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the Warriors can afford two more losses in the finals.