There has been much open mocking of Vancouver Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo and it rose to a fever pitch earlier this week with his "my contract sucks" comment.
That would be the 12-year, $64-million U.S. contract that he signed two years ago.
The 10 years left on that contract for a goalie who turned 34 yesterday is what was to blame for the Canucks not being able to move him to another team before Wednesday's National Hockey League trade deadline.
It's hard to feel sympathy for someone who gets paid in just one game, regardless of whether he stops pucks or sits on the bench. what most people would be happy with as excellent pay for an entire year.
Luongo sees himself as a victim, believe it or not, of circumstance and so does his team but they're actually both victims of economics and their own shortsightedness.
In his books Moneyball and The Blind Side, Michael Lewis studies how difficult it is to assign value to people, particularly in sports. It takes a little luck and a lot of nerve to recognize talent when no one else sees it, particularly when that talent manifests itself in unexpected ways and in unexpected places.
The Luongo story also illustrates the challenge of setting a financial value to athletic talent but from the opposite end of the spectrum - paying too much for someone with obvious great skills.
Although his play faltered last year and he now finds himself as the well-compensated backup to his younger understudy, Cory Schneider, Luongo, is still considered one of the elite goaltenders in the league and will compete for a spot on the Canadian Olympic team next year, the same team he backstopped to the gold medal three years ago.
And it's not like no team was willing to have him. There are at least six teams looking to take a run for the Stanley Cup this year that would have paid, if they were allowed, for Luongo's services. But under the salary cap, where each team has a maximum amount they can devote to player salaries, Luongo's contract is simply too rich. If this were baseball, Luongo would have been picked up the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox, a team with deep pockets in a league where players really go to the highest bidder.
Another part of the economics, and here's where the shortsightedness comes in, is our blindness when it comes to our personal value and the value of things we own. Most people see themselves as invaluable members of their workplaces and imagine the whole organization falling apart without their contribution. It was more than ego for Luongo to not be able to see how the Canucks could possibly win without him, it was human nature.
Canucks management showed their human nature, too. When selling things, people automatically and unconsciously inflate the value of those items and have a hard time understanding when others don't recognize that value.
Furthermore, Luongo has a no-trade clause in that hefty contract. He gets to veto any trade he doesn't like, further complicating any deal.
Economists would probably argue that the Canucks were trying to trade the wrong goalie, that with the restrictions in play from Luongo's contract and the NHL collective bargaining agreement, that the team would have better compensated trading Schneider and with much less of the hassle.
Who knows? That could still happen.
