Knicks Sickness: How New York's Historic Championship Sparked a Wave of "Sick Days"
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Feeling a bit under the weather? Or did Jalen Brunson just drop 45 points to secure New York’s first basketball championship in 53 years, leaving you with a celebratory hangover so severe that looking at a spreadsheet feels like a workplace hazard?
If it’s the latter, don’t worry, according to data from Google you aren’t alone.
RotoGrinders analyzed nationwide trending Google searches to find out how the NBA playoffs have impacted workplace call-outs. The results? “Knicks sickness” has been sweeping New York and Texas.
Key Findings
- The Monday morning after the Knicks secured the championship (June 15th) was the 5th “sickest” day in the entire United States, beating the day after Memorial Day.
- While “Knicks sickness” is high, it does not beat the Super Bowl for worker calls out.
- New Yorkers outpaced Texans by 5.56% in average search interest for “calling in sick” across the entire playoff period.
- New York’s fake sick days peaked before the NBA Finals even started, on Tuesday, June 2nd.
- Texas hit its absolute sickness peak Tuesday, June 16th.
- Nationally, the single biggest day for sick-day intent wasn’t sports-related at all. It was Thursday, May 21st, likely driven by Memorial Day.
The 10 “Sickest” Days Nationally For The Past Month
The 5 “Sickest” Days In New York And Texas The Past Month
New York and Texas were analyzed because they are the home states of the two NBA Finals teams
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Methodology
To get to the bottom of how the NBA playoffs impacted worker absenteeism, we analyzed Google Trends data for the intent rich phrase “calling in sick.”
Calling in sick was used as a proxy to measure the amount of people calling in sick to work.
Nationally, we found the 10 days with the highest trending searches for “calling in sick.” This process was repeated for New York (home of the Knicks) and Texas (home of the Spurs.)
This data primarily focuses on the NBA finals. However, both states have World Cup games, so catching international matches or checking our regular DFS soccer picks before a weekday morning shift, could also be amping up the desire to call in sick.
We can’t officially prove that every single person googling “calling in sick” actually went through with it. However, it is a good measure of people actively seeking out how to call in sick to work.
You can see the full dataset here.
The Verdict
Whether it is an extra-long holiday weekend or a historic, 53-year-in-the-making basketball title, American workers will always find a reason to choose the couch over the cubicle.
The data proves that while major holidays like Memorial Day still reign supreme for orchestrating the ultimate four-day weekend, big sporting events will have lots of employees fake coughing.
“Knicks Sickness” didn’t just hit New York and Texas, it was contagious enough to warp the entire country’s baseline data and turn a random Monday in June into one of the “sickest” days in America. Maybe the next time a major sports franchise secures a legendary championship, bosses should declare a holiday, before workers make their own.