Did You Enjoy Your Sunday Off?

A Daily Babble Production

Sundays have been stressful times for Celtics fans as of late.

Prior to yesterday, of the 10 Sundays in 2009 that did not intersect with All-Star weekend, the Celtics rested just once.  The results of late haven't been much to write home about either.  The Celtics went 1-4 in their last five Sunday afternoon efforts, including home losses to San Antonio, Detroit and Orlando as well as a stunning defeat in Milwaukee.

This recent Sunday rough patch has led to a fair bit of griping about the team's sluggish starts in games that tip in the afternoon as well as some grumpiness heading into the work week for advocates of the green (anyone else wondering what a study of Monday productivity for Celtics fans over the past month would look like?).

Given the networks' love for weekend ratings and possible Sunday playoff affairs (as well as two more regular season games) to come, the time seemed ripe for a brief and likely trivial look back at how the start of the new week has treated the Celts over the course of the season.

The Celts' five Sunday losses are their highest total for any day of the week.  That the team has played less than 20 percent of its games on Sundays but posted nearly 28 percent of its losses in those contests is no doubt a bit of an oddity.  But it hasn't been as bad as the recent slump would indicate.

Truth is, it's been a tale of two segments of the calendar.  The Celtics are 4-5 on Sundays in 2009, and their offense has often appeared sleepy, failing to crack 100 points in each of the five losses and in six of the nine games overall. 

But the Celtics dominated Sundays in the 2008 portion of the season.  Not only did they go a perfect 5-0 over that stretch, but they cleared 100 points on four of those occasions, won by double-digits four times and posted an average margin of victory better than 19 points per game.

What all this means is...probably very little.  The Celtics had better health and luck (see their record in close games) and played better basketball over the portion of the season that occurred before the calendar and haven't been quite as good across the board since that west coast road trip during the winter holidays.  That the Knicks, Raptors, Pacers and Kings were among those 2008 Sunday opponents didn't hurt either.  But while the Celtics' 9-5 record on Sundays for the season falls more than 100 percentage points below their season mark of .746, it's still nothing to sneeze at.

With the statistical goofiness of Boxed Out still on my brain and plenty of time to kill before yesterday's Mizzou game, I figured a bit of trivial numbers-crunching wouldn't kill anyone.  Sundays haven't been our best day, but they haven't been as bad as our minds might trick us into believing thanks to the "What have you done for me lately?" phenomenon that never seems to get too far away in the sporting world.

So in the name of easing back into the work week (and tonight's game against the Clippers), how did you spend your rare Sunday without the green?