I think many a junior just never initialized a repository, and 'git clone' is what they've used to "get a repository". So I would forgive them for thinking that a remote is needed for having a repository on their drive.
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-The-Protoco...
".. you don't have to keep the previous versions, so it saves space? OK... No, I was talking about the real git."