I have lived in 6 NBA cities and been exposed to the radio and color commentators in each of those cities. I also travel a lot for work and watch and listen to local commentators. In my book Locke is not only above average he is very good at what he does. Works very hard and provides insights from his analytics that few others do. With regard to his homerism, he is far far less that way than most I have listened to. He doesn't trash the Jazz but he is very comfortable questioning things they do. So I don't think he is a homer or a sell out at all. Not the greatest play by play guy but I like him for what I learn from his research and analytics. Compared to others, I have never understood why folks like to trash him.
Agree overall. We are lucky to have a local guy that puts out so much free content. If you know what to ignore/take with a grain of salt from him, he's excellent part of the Jazz media presence. In addition to being paid by the team, something else that people underestimate is that he's developing relationships with those players. It's so easy for us to go out and be like "this player is a scrub, this draft pick is a total bust, that coach screwed up and cost us games, that executive should go", it's not easy when you are embedded in the team and have to interact with those people every day.