There’s a specific kind of sports analyst that breaks into the industry by innovating in the analytics game (whether applying them better or creating new useful ones), but as time goes on, thinks that they’re building experience so they can just rely on their gut and eye test. And that is not how that works.

Gotta say, I did not have “Tyrese Maxey: Defensive Stopper” on my bingo card.

Honestly, I think the “big market bias” people are describing in this thread is a real phenomenon, but this Mitchell example is just a bad one. He has concrete ties to New York, and it’s been substantively rumored about him for a long time.

The same is not true of a ton of stars the media baselessly opines about “when” they’ll force a move. Take Luka. Media members have been wishcasting for him to ask out to go to a big market for years. The same was true of Dame before this year, of Giannis, and of Embiid. There’s nothing behind this reporting, but it’s constant anyway.

There are also some tinfoil-hat breadcrumbs here. A couple years ago, Zach Lowe did a podcast around Summer League (IIRC) with a drunk Rachel Nichols on the background, who went on a long rant about a couple big name players not playing in markets she wanted to hang out in. I’m not sure that’s such an uncommon sentiment around the media landscape.