The Warriors visited the Clippers on April 15, 2026, in an NBA Play-In Tournament game that sent one team on to Phoenix and ended the other’s season. The loser of Golden State-LA was eliminated.
The Clippers had Isaiah Jackson upgraded from questionable to probable for the game after a right ankle sprain, a small boost for a team that had already lost Yanic Konan Niederhauser to a season-ending foot injury. Jackson, 6'8" and 205 pounds, was hurt last month in Indiana and missed the final eight games of the season.
Golden State brought Stephen Curry back after he missed more than two months to manage a knee injury, but the comeback came inside a season that had gone wrong as age and injury piled up. The Warriors were described as the worst out of the 20 teams that were still kicking, which is why this game mattered as a survival test rather than a normal postseason step.
The Play-In Tournament exists to sort out the final playoff spots, and the pressure was even sharper in the Western bracket because the Clippers finished outside the top eight at the end of the regular season for the first time in eight years. They also went 1-8 against Oklahoma City, San Antonio and Denver this season, a record that underscored how much work remained if they were going to make a run.
Tyrone Lue called that route "the hard way is the Clipper Way," and the line fit a team that has spent much of the season trying to survive the margins. On the other side, Draymond Green’s preference for a "16-game guy" captured the Warriors’ belief that they still had enough to matter in a knockout setting, even after a bruising year.
The tension is that both teams arrived with reasons to believe and reasons to doubt. Los Angeles had the home floor and the chance to keep its season alive, but it also had the burden of a roster thinned by injuries. Golden State had Curry back, but it also had the weight of a bad season and the knowledge that one loss would end it immediately.
Elsewhere in the play-in, the winner of Orlando-Philadelphia was set to advance to the playoffs, while the loser was set to face Charlotte on Friday. For the Clippers and Warriors, the night was simpler and harsher: win, or stop here.
