MILWAUKEE – Ty Lawson remembers the moment vividly three seasons ago, his coach livid with him over a step-back jumper he took. In that rookie season, Lawson made that shot, and yet George Karl was fuming and gave Lawson a stern message on his way back to the Denver Nuggets’ next huddle.

“You can’t do that!” Karl shouted.

“[Karl] was pissed,” Lawson says now. “He didn’t want me shooting anything but a layup or a three. But I’m like: In the year 2013, that’s when I know I’ll do that step-back.”

Now, Karl has immense trust in Lawson, a relationship that has constantly tightened. They know it had to be this way once Chauncey Billups left in the Carmelo Anthony trade. Ultimately, Karl understood the Nuggets’ future rested on giving Lawson freedom, and in turn rested on his ability to blossom with it. And he hasn’t looked back.

Danilo Gallinari is done for the season and Kenneth Faried won’t return until the playoffs, but the Nuggets still clinched homecourt advantage through the first round, escaping Monday night with a 112-111 win over the Bucks. Lawson played his third straight game since missing eight of nine, and he put on a clinic: 26 points, seven assists, five rebounds – and a step-back game-winning jumper with 9.3 seconds left.

For all the talk about the Nuggets lacking a superstar, a go-to guy, Lawson looks around the locker room and believes the talent is there for a championship run this season. Yes, Gallinari is gone – a date for surgery on his torn ACL still not set so that the swelling in his knee subsides – but teammates believe Faried will return from a sprained ankle for Game 1 of the postseason. With an offense based on execution and movement and a defense heightened by Andre Iguodala, the Nuggets have been entertaining and nearly unbeatable at home all season.

So will this Nuggets season be a failure if Denver doesn’t win a championship?

“I think it would be a failure,” Lawson told RealGM. “We’ve been playing well all this year. We have the best record in team history. We’re a deep team, players good at each position, and we’ve been playing well. I feel like if we don’t make it past the second round, I wouldn’t be satisfied.”

For Lawson, the recovery from a torn plantar fascia in his right heel has tested him physically, tested his patience. From ankle and foot mobility exercises to massages, icing to even acupuncture, Lawson has done whatever it takes to get back on the court, get back healthy. He had been coming three hours before Nuggets practices – 8 a.m. trips to the team’s facility for treatment. Lawson’s mindset was clear: “I got to do what I got to do to get healthy,” he said.

Karl had a plan to ease Lawson into the Nuggets’ lineup: Limited minutes in a bench role in the first game back, an increased workload in the second and a complete test in the third. After playing 19 and 31 minutes in his first two games back, Lawson’s performance Monday was punctuated in over 38 minutes, in a brilliant display of blazing past defenders and absorbing and finishing through contact all night. It left Lawson, Karl said, “reassured … [with] his swag back. We know how valuable he is to us.”

“Sometimes, I thought that it was getting better – I was able to walk with no pain – and I start running and I couldn’t cut,” Lawson said. “I feel like I’m close to a 100 percent now or almost there.”

Three postseasons have come and gone for Lawson, and he knows the Nuggets need him to be more of Games 2, 3, 6 and 7 of last season’s series against the Los Angeles Lakers. Lawson has taken such a critical responsibility, games with seven points, with nine points, would shape a playoff failure for him.

The Nuggets know this: Their defense, especially on the perimeter, will have to stiffen in the playoffs. Monta Ellis shredded them inside and outside, dropping 38 points, and J.J. Redick and Mike Dunleavy continually got open shots on pin-down sets. Nevertheless, the Nuggets are a virtual lock for the third seed in the Western Conference and either possible six-seed, the Golden State Warriors or Houston Rockets, play right into Denver’s style.

Soon, Lawson knows the Nuggets will again start to hear their supposed flaws. No superstar, no All-Star. Lawson has long wanted this chance to lead the Nuggets deep into the postseason, this chance to receive the credit, the accountability that comes with being a go-to guy. On the cusp of the playoffs, there was Lawson on Monday, hitting a game-winner and strutting, nodding back to the bench.

“I think I’m getting better and better every year,” Lawson said. “Between me and Iguodala and even JaVale [McGee] – he has the most potential probably out of anybody – and Wilson [Chandler] is a starting three on any team in the league ...

“We can have superstars, All-Stars. Definitely somebody will be that in the near future. As of next year.”

For now, these Nuggets will be Lawson’s show, and he and Karl both knew the organization needed it this way. He can take whatever shot he wants in any moment, Lawson says with a smile, and he has the free rein and Karl just lets him run and run now. Even so, Lawson remembers it wasn’t always like this, and he still recalls that Karl message when he took – and made – a jumper that the coach deemed a bad shot.

On the night he hit the same step-back jump shot from inside the free throw line, Lawson summoned out his response to Karl three seasons ago: In 2013, I’ll be free to do that. In 2013, Ty Lawson is free to evoke a championship pursuit.