OAKLAND, Calif. — As the Golden State Warriors closed in on the record for most regular-season wins by an N.B.A. team, held then by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, the team’s coach, Steve Kerr, sensed trouble.

“I think they want the record,” Kerr said of his players in April, when they were still four wins short of the record of 73 victories. “But I think what they’ve probably realized is that maybe all the talk and all the focus on the record has gotten us away from our process and what makes us who we are, what makes us pretty good.”

His anxiety was so pronounced that over the final weeks of the regular season “slippage” became one of his favorite words.

He saw slippage when the Warriors were blown out by the lowly Los Angeles Lakers on March 6. He saw slippage when the Warriors barely outlasted the Philadelphia 76ers on March 27. And he saw slippage when the Warriors lost two of three games at home at the start of April, a rare stretch of futility that imperiled the Warriors’ quest to catch the Bulls of the Michael Jordan era.