Sunday wins have been rare for the Utah Jazz

SALT LAKE CITY — If I were Deron Williams, I'd check out some of the Jazz's history before pushing too hard for Sunday games.

The team hasn't exactly been a juggernaut in that area.

Maybe he should settle for playing on Family Home Evening Mondays.

The All-Star guard questioned the Jazz's scheduling practices last week, after CEO Greg Miller said playing on Sunday didn't make business sense.

"It is a business decision to not play home games on Sunday," he wrote on the team's Web site. "We believe it would be very difficult to draw 19,911 fans (a sellout) to EnergySolutions Arena for a regular-season Sunday game, based on past experiences we have had with Sunday home games during the NBA Playoffs. About the only way it would work was if the opponent were the Lakers, LeBron (James) or the Celtics."

But Williams told reporters that stacking games on other days made the schedule more difficult.

"Very much so," said Williams. He went on to add the Jazz seem to play "every day of the week, some months. It's pretty bad."

So the Jazz have been doing what people do in other jobs — squeezing in too many work hours during the week. That, in turn, may have caused them to suffer fatigue and injuries.

Spreading things out seems to make sense from a basketball standpoint. But it doesn't necessarily make perfect business sense. Miller noted that the Salt Lake Bees draw 50 percent fewer fans on Sunday and that Larry H. Miller Sports and Entertainment movie theaters are also slow on that day.

Sunday is considered a sacred day for Mormons, and since a large share of Jazz fans are LDS, the team has always requested no Sunday regular-season games.

This isn't the first Jazz team that has dealt with the Sunday issue, nor is it the best. Karl Malone and John Stockton avoided Sunday games for 18 years and went further than any Jazz team in history. Jerry Sloan has never complained about scheduling, no matter what the day. His attitude is that somebody else schedules games, his team plays them.

"If you're looking for an excuse, I guess that's as good as any," he has said regarding back-to-backs and other scheduling issues.