He has a point, but I think he misunderstands what ESPN is there for. ESPN isn't there to cover the team that wins; they are there to get people to watch their channel and especially their games. Zion is a social media phenomenon.

People who never talk about college basketball are coming up to me and talking about Zion because they know I'm a Duke fan. It's bizarre and reminds me of late 2017 when I would overhear random people at basketball games talking about Bitcoin, something I had always thought of as very narrow. I only talked Bitcoin with nerds excited about PGP signing parties or zero knowledge proofs. But suddenly it was bigger than I realized.

ESPN is seeing crazy ratings on Duke basketball games this year, and it's partially due to Zion. They need those eyeballs, and for whatever reason Nassir Little doesn't bring them in the same way, thus ESPN's coverage is Zion getting hurt, not Luke Maye's incredible game.

This isn't fair, but I'm not sure I could imagine a world in which ESPN's behavior would be different. And...well, this quote is exactly how you'd expect Nassir Little to talk given the landscape and his incentives: this creates a great story about his team beating a hyped team, being underrated, being ignored by the media, etc. People love that story, and it will bring more awareness to his team.

But I don't think big college basketball fans think UNC is underrated; they know UVA, Duke, Gonzaga, UNC, Michigan St, are all really good teams this year. But that's not who ESPN is designing their coverage for; they need mass market appeal across all sports, and their social media accounts. Talking about Zion is probably a better way to get attention than to talk about Luke Maye's 30 point game. It's not fair, but it's not a conspiracy or even a mistake on ESPN's part.