Yep, teams will no doubt gravitate towards players they have some form of existing relationship with because you have to narrow the pool somehow.
Still, you have to do your due diligence as well and try not to miss on a guy that could help your team and is attainable.
To me the toughest part is the compressed window of time. So many players to vet and new ones popping up all the time. You have to make sure you are getting good fits for your team but you also have to move really quickly as there are tons of teams all going after the same players. Whole process has to be exhausting.
And of course while doing all this you have to keep your current roster happy so that they don't choose to leave. Thankfully for Niko he doesn't really have to devote a ton of effort to that part this year since the inherited roster was really small.