Deep down in the ocean, where darkness and pressure feeds on the unprepared, sea anemones and hermit crabs survive by relying on each other.

Hermit crabs, who are vulnerable to larger predators, pick up anemones and place them on their backs to ward off larger predators and protect their body when they lose their shell.

The anemones, who can’t move much at all and struggle to feed on their own, get to feed on the leftovers from the hermit crabs and travel to new and potentially better environments.

The hermit crab and anemone need each other and they know it and embrace it, because for them survival is king.

In an NBA full of lonesome hermit crabs who say “f*ck my shell I don’t need,” anemones who try to eat the hermit crab that picks them up and crabs that let anemones go because they feel like they are holding them back, the core players on the Golden State Warriors embrace the symbiotic relationships amongst themselves, and survive and thrive because of it.

Their 118-113 Game 6 win over the Houston Rockets, clinching their fifth consecutive Western Conference Finals and 21st straight playoff series with a road win, was another perfect encapsulation of their mutual understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

And it’s this understanding that has turned this core group – Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala and even Shaun Livingston – into The Franchise Killers, kings of the superteams, the breakers of championship windows and the closers of title runs.

It started from the jump in game six.

Down Kevin Durant and Demarcus Cousins, Klay Thompson and the bench carried the team as Stephen Curry started 0-5 in the first half, scoring 0 points and only playing 12 minutes after falling into early foul trouble.

But the two-time MVP recovered, closing the game with a virtuoso performance of 33 second-half points and some classic pick-and-roll with Draymond Green, while Thompson and Andre Iguodala each made some big threes and difference-making defensive plays.

After another iconic Curry three, Thompson’s backbreaker with 36 seconds left and eight more Curry free throws in the last 30 seconds, the Warriors had once again knocked the Rockets out of the playoffs and rejoiced in their revelry.

Curry and his threes will get the props for his 23-point fourth (or hate for his terrible opening, depending on who you ask), but he was only great for 24 of the 34 minutes he played, while everyone else that stepped on the floor in blue and gold was great all the way through. But Curry’s great was – and always is – more than enough in those last 24 minutes to make up for the first 10.

But he clearly has not minded that he has taken a back seat to Kevin Durant at times, and his teammates, Durant and Cousins included, don’t care if and when gets the praise (at least not enough to get in the way of winning titles). They join in on it.

Curry, Thompson and Green all took time right after the game to point out that they will need Durant to get through the rest of the playoff, immediately after completing easily one of their most impressive wins in the historic five-year run. Curry, who scored the most fourth-quarter points in the playoffs since Allen Iverson, even went as far to say that Durant is the best player in the world to Scott Van Pelt.