No longer prisoners of NBA history, the Nuggets now live by their own rules and write the law in this league.

Laughing in the locker room after a 115-109 victory against Boston, the Nuggets flexed and laughed and serenaded the dunking prowess of teammate Aaron Gordon in the way only supremely confident champions can do.

“Bring the hammer!” they shouted Thursday.

And that hammer came down on the Celtics.

While all those musty championship banners gather dust back in the Boston Garden, here in Denver we have a basketball team with twice the swagger of a team that entered this game with the league’s best record.

On a night when the stands in Ball Arena looked way too much like the bar at Cheers, with way too many green-clad chowderheads cheering every one of the 41 points scored by Boston star Jaylen Brown, the defending NBA champs made a anything-but-subtle statement to the Celtics and their rowdy faithful:

“You’ve got to give the Celtics fans credit. They always come out strong.” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “But you know what we say. They can take that L on the way out, baby.”

While the calendar insisted this was a regular-season game in March, the intensity of this game was as turnt as the shoes on the feet of Nuggets guard Jamal Murray.

The Blue Arrow laced up neon green sneakers before taking the court against the team with the league’s best record.

It was a fashion statement that suggested Murray came to play, maybe mess with the minds of the Celtics, stomp on their four-leaf clover and never back down.

The Nuggets have something, an indescribable wow, that Boston can’t match.

“The head of the snake,” is what young Nuggets forward Peyton Watson calls the team’s inherent advantage in every game.

That advantage’s name is Nikola Jokic, who will win the MVP again this season, if voters don’t lose their minds.

Against the Celtics, Jokic finished with 32 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists. He’s a triple-double machine.

Boston has fashioned a formidable 48-12 record this season against everybody else in the NBA.

But against the Nuggets?

Boston is 0-2, a loser at home and away against Denver, with no chance now for redemption until a possible rematch in the Finals.

Although it’s a long and winding road to a showdown for the Larry O’Brien Trophy in June between these two teams, the one most obvious advantage for the Nuggets in this match-up might startle ESPN motormouth Stephen A. Smith or any basketball pundit that has ever tried to denigrate Jokic as a tub of lard.

Even though the scoring ability of Jayson Tatum is sublime and the basketball IQ of Derrick White is Mensa worthy, the Nuggets are far superior athletically to Boston.

“You don’t win a championship if you can’t handle physicality,” Malone said.

That fact is as obvious and undeniable as the one-handed, windmill, put-back dunk by forward Aaron Gordon off a miss by Jokic that staked the Nuggets to a 109-102 lead with a few ticks more than two minutes on the scoreboard clock in the fourth quarter.

While Gordon tried to claim it was just a matter of right place at the right time, teammates in the locker room were having none of his humility, shouting: “Dunk of the year!”

Denver nearly wasted that seven-point cushion, with Tatum clanking an open look at a 3-point shot that could’ve given Boston the lead 45 seconds before the final buzzer.

Unlike a year ago, when the Nuggets walked in their sleep during the final weeks of the regular season, with a No. 1 seed wrapped up, Denver is now in a race to the finish line with Minnesota and Oklahoma City for supremacy in the Western Conference.

“We’ve got to find a way to stay hungry,’ said Malone, whose squad is 7-1 since the All-Star break. “You can’t just get up for the great teams.”