Player transform has not been assigned when player enters trigger collider?

Question

I wrote some code so when the player falls off a platform and collides with a trigger collider called Respawn Trigger, the player's transform position is set to an empty gameObject called Respawn Point. Everything seems to work well except I get the following error each time I collide with the trigger and respawn:

UnassignedReferenceException: The variable player of PlayerRespawn has not been assigned.You probably need to assign the player variable of the PlayerRespawn script in the inspector. PlayerRespawn.OnTriggerEnter2D (UnityEngine.Collider2D other) (at Assets/Scripts/PlayerRespawn.cs:9)

This is my script I put on my Respawn Trigger gameObject:

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerRespawn : MonoBehaviour {

    [SerializeField] private Transform player;
    [SerializeField] private Transform respawnPoint;

    void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other) {
        player.transform.position = respawnPoint.localPosition;
    }
}

Answer 1

I was able to fix the issue by assigning it in code instead of in the inspector with this code:

public class PlayerRespawn : MonoBehaviour {

    private Transform player;
    private Transform respawnPoint;

    private void Start() {
        GameObject p = GameObject.Find("Player");
        player = p.transform;

        GameObject rp = GameObject.FindWithTag("Respawn Point");
        respawnPoint = rp.transform;
    }

    void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other) {
        player.position = respawnPoint.position;
    }
}

I am embarrassed to say I found the script also attached to the Player by mistake!

Answer 2

The error message suggests that the "player" variable has not been assigned in the inspector of the PlayerRespawn script.