Henry Grimes went off some kind of deep end, and Sal Mosca essentially drank the Kool Aid from birth.
Now, what kind of "familiarity" are we talking about hete? If you mean a deep engagement, then, no probably not. But if the guy checked it out enough to be put off by it, then what are we expecting here, an objective scholarly evaluation, with anything less being fakistic bullshit?
I take his statement at face value, and am happy to note it with a big yawn, like Bird wanted to study with Varese and everybody dug Stravinky, and yes, but so fucking what? Neil Hefti still wrote Batman, Sal Mosca put himself into some weird isozone, Schoenberg did nothing like that, Warne was still genius, and really, what was Bird going to do with Varese, and/or vice-versa.
At the end of the day, opinions don't matter, results do.