If the reason we learn history is to avoid repeating it, then Kiki Vandeweghe is a terrible student.

After months of waiting, the Nuggets’ general manager finally got his wish yesterday when he called coach Jeff Bzdelik into the boardroom, put on his Donald wig and said, “You’re fired.”

Certainly, the Nuggets’ coach was in no position to argue for a stay of execution. Denver had lost six straight and eight of nine, dropping them to a 13-15 record after they had begun the season talking about a top-four seed in the West.

But Denver’s slow start should not surprise any students of recent NBA news, especially those scholars living in the vicinity of East Rutherford. This year’s Nuggets are yet another shining example of the penny-wise, pound-foolish logic of keeping a coach you don’t really like just because he has a year left on his contract.

Coming into the season, the Nuggets weren’t pleased with Bzdelik. But he was on a two-year deal with an option for 2004-05 that automatically kicked in if the Nuggets made the playoffs – which they barely did. Vandeweghe was frustrated with Bzdelik’s inability to show progress in the development of young players like forward Nikoloz Tskitishvili and center Nene. Those players, in turn, were making Vandeweghe look bad since he had picked them ahead of stars like Amare Stoudemire and Tayshaun Prince.

Furthermore, there were some worrisome issues with the team’s playing style. The Nuggets are still a superior fast-break team, but they’ve looked utterly lost in the half court throughout Bzdelik’s tenure, with any effort at a set play quickly degenerating into somebody (usually Carmelo Anthony) going one-on-one and forcing a contested jumper.

All that makes Vandeweghe’s desire for a new coach perfectly justifiable. But here’s the question: Why did he wait 28 games to pull the trigger? The Nuggets could just as easily have told Bzdelik after last season, “thanks, but we’re going in a different direction,” brought in several candidates for Vandeweghe to interview, and then picked the one he liked best.

Instead, the Nuggets did the same thing the Nets did a year ago – keep a coach they didn’t want because they thought they were saving money. In reality, all either team did was waste half a season. The Nuggets will continue to pay Bzdelik to sit in his living room for 54 games, but now there’s the added complication of being 13-15.

The problem with having a lame-duck coach is that everybody knows it – especially the players. It was particularly evident in the Nuggets’ case because they had given a three-year contract to assistant (and coach-in-waiting) Michael Cooper. As a result, the players felt free to tune out their coach and give a half-hearted defensive effort. Denver ranks 13th in Defensive Efficiency (my measure of points allowed per 100 possessions) this season, the same as last year – which wouldn’t be notable except that they added one of the game’s best defenders, ex-Net Kenyon Martin, in the off-season and didn’t lose a single performer of note.

As with the Nets a year ago, Denver’s logic for waiting to fire Bzdelik was flimsy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the revenue from a few playoff games is considerably greater than the cost of paying Bzdelik to sit at home – revenue that is in great peril since they waited so long to switch coaches. Similarly, the 2003-04 Nets probably would have played Game 7 against Detroit in the friendly (if partially empty) confines of the Meadowlands had they not limped out to a 20-21 start under Byron Scott – which could have meant a dramatically different result against the Pistons.

Now that the Nuggets have the coaching quandary out of the way and can get on with the season, I look for them to have a similar renaissance to the one the Nets enjoyed under Lawrence Frank last year. Because Cooper has a three-year deal, he should command the kind of respect and effort that Bzdelik couldn’t (ironically enough, Cooper was Scott’s backup with the Lakers as a player). That should immediately translate into an improved defensive effort.

Beyond that, the most important aspect of Cooper’s performance will be the development of the young players. Nene has floundered since a promising rookie year, as he’s failed to develop a go-to move and remains strangely unable to rebound despite being one of the quickest centers in the league. Tskitishvili has barely left the bench since being taken with the fourth overall pick two-and-a-half years ago – not that he’s given his coaches much reason to put him on the court. He’s shooting a pathetic 36% right now, but hey, he’s showing improvement – last year he shot 33%.

Finally, there’s Rodney White, probably the most confounding part of the Bzdelik era. White has some legitimate weaknesses – he’s not a strong defender, and he can get a bit overzealous in looking for his offense. But White is a legitimate point machine if the Nuggets would just let him take the court. Bzdelik’s bewildering refusal to play White while Anthony has been out with a sprained ankle may have been the final straw. Look for Cooper to give White about 20 minutes a night as a go-to scorer off the bench.

In the end, the problem for the Nuggets is that they’re in a much tougher conference than the Nets were a year ago. Denver has virtually no chance of achieving the top-four seed it had envisioned when the year started, as the club trails both Dallas and Sacramento by five games.

The only thing in its favor is that some other projected playoff teams also have had difficult starts. Houston is only half a game ahead of them, while Memphis is one behind. Thus, a brief hot streak could quickly distance the Nuggets from the playoff pretenders in the West and deliver them into the postseason.

But just making the postseason wasn’t supposed to be the plan this year. The Nuggets invested millions in Kenyon Martin and Marcus Camby this summer with the idea of challenging the West’s elite. Unfortunately, their decision to save a few pennies by not resolving the coaching situation in a timely manner undermined their multimillion dollar outlay on salaries – further proof that the lame-duck coach strategy never, ever works at the NBA level. Of course, had the Nuggets just consulted the history books, they could have averted this whole ugly mess.