Somehow, a full 100 percent of fans are confident in the Suns’ direction after two weeks

It’s funny to post this after the Suns played their first sub-par game of the year, but 100 percent of respondents to our FanPulse survey this week said they were confident in the direction of this franchise.

Whoa.

Understanding it’s a pretty vague question, there are so many questions facing the team that are making complete optimism hard to buy into. Still, I guess I would say I am confident in the overall direction, in large part thanks to Devin Booker looking like an All-Star in his fifth season and Monty Williams hitting the ground running in his return to head coaching.

As the biggest pessimist most of the time on this here site (which I realized this week I’ve been writing at for FOUR damn years now), maybe the fact that even I am intrigued shows how much these Suns have uprooted expectations.

Anyway, on to the graph:

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The other question FanPulse participants were asked this week looked at the value of the coach’s challenge in the NBA. From a Suns perspective, I could understand if many of you were down on the whole concept. It seems that Monty Williams forgets about the possibility of using his challenge unless his players call for it, and that often has led to him getting burned.

Against Utah, Williams did not challenge a late foul on Devin Booker in order to also have the referees look at how much time should have been on the clock. Williams said he did so in part because he was worried about losing his timeout, but that didn’t end up being important anyway as the Suns were unable to get a shot off.

Last night against Miami, a super iffy call on Aron Baynes as he tapped Bam Adebayo in mid-air looked like a call Williams might have been able to overturn with a challenge. No dice. The coach opted not to waive his finger in a circle and make the referees put their headphones on and talk to their bosses in New Jersey. Fair enough.

A majority of FanPulsers across the country still are in favor of the coach’s challenge.

From an anecdotal perspective of someone who watches an amount of basketball that could be described as something between “a lot” and “too much,” it seems like not many coaches have been effective challenging calls.

Similar to the pass interference challenge implemented in the NFL this year, it seems like officials are hesitant to reverse the call on the field. We’ll see if that changes over time.

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