Dane Moore covers the Minnesota Timberwolves for his own podcast operation, earns his own locker room access, and apparently keeps having the same conversation with ESPN’s assignment desk about it.
The exchange started innocuously enough. Moore had posted a clip of Anthony Edwards discussing how he’s learned to embrace being double-teamed — a meaningful evolution from where Edwards was roughly 14 months ago, when Moore documented him venting postgame about his frustration with teams taking the ball out of his hands.
Denver was sending a second defender at Anthony Edwards when he crossed court in today’s game.
Asked Ant, who used to be really frustrated by that look, about playing through that type of aggressive coverage.
“I’m not mad at all because, at the end of the day, my 4 is better… https://t.co/lF58jWRhFL pic.twitter.com/YUgr93fu53
— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) March 1, 2026
The ESPN Assignment Desk account then replied publicly on X, as if the whole thing were a formality: “Hello, Dane! Please see your DMs for a message from us!”
Hello, Dane! Please see your DMs for a message from us!
— ESPNAssignmentDesk (@ESPNAssignDesk) March 2, 2026
It was not, apparently, a formality. Moore had been through this before. Multiple times, by his account.
“You do not have permission to use it,” Moore replied, “as I’ve told you numerous times in DMs. Shouldn’t have laid off all those reporters if you wanted locker room content.”
You do not have permission to use it — as I’ve told you numerous times in DMs. Shouldn’t have laid off all those reporters if you wanted locker room content.
— Dane Moore (@DaneMooreNBA) March 2, 2026
To be clear, ESPN asked. That’s the right thing to do. But the fact that they’re asking an independent Timberwolves podcast host for postgame player access content — and have apparently had to ask him multiple times — speaks to a gap that ESPN created itself. The network has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs over the last several years, and with each one, the beat coverage that used to exist in every NBA city has gotten thinner.
ESPN still has NBA reporters. Jamal Collier covers the Timberwolves among six Midwest teams out of Chicago, and the network employs a deep stable of writers and insiders across the league. Tim MacMahon covers the Western Conference out of Dallas. Dave McMenamin primarily covers the Los Angeles Lakers. Ramona Shelburne has spent years cultivating sources across the league. Anthony Slater and Kendra Andrews cover the Warriors. Tim Bontemps handles the Eastern Conference. Marc Spears, Ohm Youngmisuk, Vincent Goodwill, and others fill out a roster that, on paper, looks comprehensive. But that’s still a relatively small group of reporters and senior writers spread across 30 teams and 30 cities, and the math doesn’t work the way it used to.
Collier can’t be in every locker room in the Midwest every night, being that he’s one person covering six teams. The beat-level presence that Moore has developed with the Timberwolves, specifically the kind that leads Anthony Edwards to sit down postgame to talk honestly about how his approach to the game has had to change, comes from years of consistent access in one building.
ESPN doesn’t seem to have that in Minneapolis. That’s why the assignment desk is in Moore’s DMs, and that’s why Moore’s answer keeps being no.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.