Stephen Curry had 22 points and eight assists, Andrew Bogut broke out with the best performance of his injury-saddled season, and the Warriors eliminated the Denver Nuggets with a 92-88 victory in Game 6 on Thursday night.
Bogut had season bests and career playoff highs of 14 points and 21 rebounds, and Green added a career-high 16 points and 10 rebounds to power Golden State into the second round for the first time in six years.
Bogut also became the first Warriors player with 20 rebounds in the playoffs since Larry Smith had 23 on May 12, 1987, at the Lakers.
Andre Iguodala scored 24 points and Ty Lawson had 17 in another disappointing early exit for Denver, which has lost in the first round nine of the past 10 seasons. The Nuggets won 23 of their final 26 regular-season games to earn the Western Conference’s third seed, then lost four of six to the hot-shooting Warriors
Even St. Louis’ own All-Star forward David Lee made a surprising return after not dressing the previous four games with what the team had called a season-ending hip injury. He grabbed one rebound and missed one jumper in 87 seconds off the bench in the first quarter. Lee did not rule himself out for Game 1 versus the Spurs on Monday in San Antonio, NBA.com reported.
Information from Espn.com and NBA.com contributed to this report.