HOUSTON — A standing ovation from their teammates greeted Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors when they finally made it back to the visitors’ locker room late Friday night after the last of their on-court obligations.

That was several minutes after Bob Myers, Golden State’s president of basketball operations, fielded a congratulatory FaceTime call from his injured but giddy superstar Kevin Durant as the game wound down. Forced to watch on television back in the Bay Area, Durant didn’t even want to wait until the final buzzer to join the revelry.

[Read what John Branch writes will be lost, and gained, when the Warriors leave Oakland for San Francisco.]

The Warriors’ postgame merriment at Toyota Center was so spirited and unscripted, awash with clingy hugs and expletive-filled shouts of joy, that it would have been easy for an outsider to surmise that they had just won a championship with this 118-113 triumph over the Houston Rockets in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals. They still need eight more victories to clinch a fourth title in five seasons, but second-round success has clearly never meant more to them.