One was from Friedman and there are others
That is nothing new and is not saying in any way that he would not have went somewhere else if another team drafted him. Friedman does not know anything more than anyone else on this topic and you can not make the leap of faith from media speculation to empirical evidence based on these opinion articles/quotes.
Show me an article where Michkov/his agent/rival GM's explicitly say that Michkov would refuse to play anywhere other than Philly......it doesn't appear to exist and nobody has been able to prove otherwise.
The default can not be that an extraordinary claim is true without evidence. The only evidence we have is that Michkov's camp met with Philly prior to the draft and the rest is bordering on tin foil hat theories.
The knowledge of such a meeting may have scared some teams off as there were already concerns about him having a shady entourage and Michkov himself being selfish. Those concerns may or may not prove to have been valid, only time will tell but until evidence that other GM's were explicitly told not to draft him this whole narrative is a house of cards built on conjecture and should be treated as such until there is concrete evidence to think otherwise.
Personally, I wanted Dvorsky when our time to pick came up and that still looks like a solid pick but I could live with Reinbacher due to a glaring organizational need and the positional scarcity of that need.
Ultimately, if Reinbacher develops well and Demidov is who we think he is we will be better off as still have concerns about Michkov whereas Demidov and Reinbacher are more complete players with no question marks about their attitudes and putting themselves above the team and their teammates.
