The left ankle injury that cost Nuggets guard Ty Lawson the last six games of the 2013-14 season has turned out to be worse than originally thought.

“I still can’t run,” Lawson said by phone from Valencia, Spain, for NBA 3X, a 3-on-3 tournament sponsored by the league. “They said it’s no surgery, just another three or four weeks just staying off of it, not really doing too much and it should be fine.”

Lawson averaged career highs in scoring (17.6 points per game) and assists (8.8) last season, but he played in only 62 games — the second-fewest of his career — as he dealt with numerous injuries. Although his sprained left ankle forced him to miss the last 10 days of the season, it did not appear to be a high-grade sprain.

Yet several weeks after the injury, his ankle was still swollen.

“I didn’t think it was that bad, either, until seven weeks after it happened and I still couldn’t run,” Lawson said. “So I was like, ‘I need to get this checked out.’ ”

Neither an X-ray nor an MRI showed any structural damage in the ankle, and Lawson was told to continue to rest it for the rest of June. Lawson expects to begin his full offseason conditioning in July, with a regimen that will include UFC-style workouts in California with Toronto Raptors DeMar DeRozan and Terrence Ross.

Lawson said he’s taking charge of his conditioning this season in a way he had not done in previous years.

“Normally, I’m not going to say I take it easy, but this summer I’m going to go hard at it and see what happens this next season,” Lawson said. “I’m going to be in the gym 24/7 this summer. I want to come into training camp in better condition, better shape.”

Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dempseypost