
Minnesota Lynx Production Team Relies on NBA Crew, Lessons From Timberwolves Season at Target Center The franchise plans to bring back on-court activations soon By Kristian Hernandez, Associate Editor
Monday, July 26, 2021 - 2:43 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
After a year filled with calls for gender and racial equity, it's time to celebrate the 25th season of the WNBA. Similar to At the Ballpark, On the Gridiron, On the Hardwood, At the Rink, and On the Pitch, SVG's In the W highlights the efforts, technological solutions, and creative ideas of a handful of production crews in the league.
In Minnesota, basketball is a year-long activity, and with the NBA's Timberwolves and the WNBA's Lynx, hoopers flock to the Twin Cities. The two franchises provide the production team at the Target Center ample opportunities to develop new ideas, but, after COVID-riddled 2020 seasons, the Lynx crew is tapping into lessons learned during the Wolves schedule.
We started Timberwolves season without any fans in the building, but by the end, we were close to 2,000 fans in the building, says Alyse Danikowski, manager, game production, Minnesota Lynx. Since we went months of entertaining only ourselves on the videoboard, we went through the whole process of remembering how to put on a show for spectators again.
MORE IN THE W INTERVIEWS
Los Angeles Sparks Move Operations to Convention Center Nearby, Turn Back the Clock to 1997
After Last Year's Wubble, Atlanta Dream Works With 3 Point Productions To Light Up Gateway Center Arena
Weekend Full of Games: Staffers Handle Busy WNBA-NBA Transition
The control room at Target Center is still observing COVID rules with plexiglass dividers.
When the sports calendar rolls to spring, the basketball world breaks into a frenzy. With the NBA season's delayed start, production teams were struggling to balance the content for the two leagues. At the tail end of the Timberwolves schedule, Danikowski and company faced an onslaught of games kicking off the 2021 Lynx campaign at Target Center. The week after the Lynx's first preseason game on May 8, a tough stretch of contests began.
We had a really crazy period when we had a Wolves game on Thursday, a Lynx home opener on Friday, and then Wolves games on Saturday and Sunday to end the season, she says. We tried to get ahead of what we could by working long hours for a couple of days, so it went pretty smoothly. We had a couple of videoboards behind the benches for the Wolves season and had to design content for the first two Lynx games before those were taken out.
Two professional teams in one building can get a bit complicated, but one of the many blessings that comes with such a situation is leveraging the production crew. The organization is able to bypass some of the effort of bringing new crewmembers up to speed. Given the nature of professional sports, there isn't much of an offseason in Minnesota. While other production teams get a chance to be away from the control room, this Minnesota-based team gets extra work.
We're really lucky to have the same incredible crew for Wolves and Lynx, says Danikowski. There's usually a period at the beginning of the season when you're trying to get back into the flow of brainstorming and creating [ideas], but we don't have that since we're going from one season into the other.
Some of the Same: Media Day Content, Prerecorded Videos Fill Videoboard Newly acquired Aerial Powers on the set of Media Day
With many lessons learned from the WNBA's Wubble season last summer and the recent Timberwolves schedule, besides having the same production crew, the Lynx are set up for the most success possible under today's unique circumstances. In terms of content for the videoboards at Target Center, the Lynx team operates with a full day's worth of video and still photos. Since COVID-19 restrictions are still hindering immediate access to players, preseason Media Day was one of the few opportunities for content-gathering. Although this year's shoot didn't include impressive shots from a drone, the staff still created a dramatic environment at Target Center for eye-popping material.
In the venue, the crew is using Media Day content to generate intro videos and headshots and is implementing that into the daily rotation on game nights.
We haven't gone into the realm of live entertainment in our building yet, notes Danikowski. We're still showing a lot of throwback and previously recorded performances at halftime and quarter breaks. We still have our mascot, Prowl, on the same stage that we had [the Timberwolves'] Crunch, and, since we have a lot of new players in the offseason and through the Draft, we're doing a lot of player features.
The Ones Who Get It Done: Shoutout to the Minnesota Lynx's Production Team Minnesota Lynx's Alyse Danikowski poses before the team's home opener vs. Phoenix on May 14.
Although the production plan has been without many real-time elements, the strategy is to improve by the time the season resumes after the Olympics break. Until then, Danikowski; Senior Manager, Game Entertainment, Sheridan West; Senior Animation and Video Features Producer Josh Harms; and Animation and Video Feature Producer Maggie Frost will spend the rest of July and the first couple of weeks of August to recharge, reset, and get ready to deliver high-quality shows of the four-time WNBA Champions.
Our team is extremely good at what they do, Danikowski says. I'm blessed to work where I do and with the people that I work with.
The Minnesota Lynx will kick off the post-Olympics part of the season with a home game vs. the New York Liberty at Target Center on Saturday, Aug. 15 at 7 p.m. ET.
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
18/09/2025
NWSL Brings on Victory as Rightsholder, Expands Deals With CBS and ESPN for 202...
18/09/2025
CBS Sports Travels to Far Reaches of Europe To Tell Clubs' Stories During 20...
18/09/2025
The Great Integration: How Sports Media Leaders Are Making MAM, Storage, and Clo...
18/09/2025
Amazon launches Prime Vision for Champions League coverage By George Bevir
Tuesday, September 16, 2025 - 18:28
Print This Story
Amazon is rolling out its ...
18/09/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Canon USA's Rich Eilers, Yuji Tanaka Talk Novel' Feature,...
18/09/2025
NBC Sports Will Deploy a Pair of Dedicated Analysts On the Bench' for Peaco...
18/09/2025
Editor's Note:
The loss of our founder and friend Robert Redford, leaves us...
18/09/2025
Editor's Note:
The loss of our founder and friend Robert Redford, leaves us...
18/09/2025
Robert Redford talks with Lab fellows at the 1981 Directors Lab | 1981 Unknown for Sundance Institute
Editor's Note:
The loss of our founder and friend ...
18/09/2025
Forget just hearing a new album; last night, London lived one. Together with Spo...
18/09/2025
Spotify and Sony Music Group today announced an extension and expansion of their long-standing, successful global partnership. As part of their ongoing collabor...
18/09/2025
SBS Audio podcast helps new Australians keep their Head Above Water
17 September, 2025
Media releases
As Australia heads toward summer, comedians and good ...
18/09/2025
Football fans to watch the inaugural Australian Championship on SBS
18 September, 2025
Media releases
Images here
SBS and Football Australia are delighted...
18/09/2025
L3Harris's advanced large solid rocket motor eSR-73 is hot fire tested at the company's Camden, Arkansas site....
18/09/2025
August, the last month of the summer vacation, brought stability to the amount of time spent in front of the TV screen. The data shows that Polish viewers watch...
18/09/2025
WASHINGTON The controversy over ABC's decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, continues to heat up, with FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez blasting ABCs decision to ...
18/09/2025
FOR-A America named Jo Aun as Senior Manager of Product Management and Engineering, reporting directly to Satoshi Kanemura, President and COO. In this new posit...
18/09/2025
MASV (massive.io), the fastest and most reliable large file transfer platform for media professionals and an IDC Innovator 2025 for Media & Entertainment*, toda...
18/09/2025
ThinkAnalytics, the global leader in video content discovery and persaonalization, today announced that Dish TV India, the leading content distribution company,...
18/09/2025
DirecTV continues to expand its women's sports offerings by adding Sports Fanatics' and Whoopi Goldberg's Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST) All Wo...
18/09/2025
WASHINGTON NextGen TV viewers are beginning to see what high dynamic range (HDR) brings to their football enjoyment with the launch of the sport's fall seas...
18/09/2025
WASHINGTON After issuing audit letters seeking Equal Employment Opportunity data from a randomly selected group of TV and radio stations in August, the Federal ...
18/09/2025
NEW YORK Warner Bros. Discovery and Nielsen have signed a new, long-term, multi-year deal that covers measurement for all Warner Bros. Discovery platforms acros...
18/09/2025
NEW YORK As part of its ongoing efforts to develop better measurement solutions, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) announced the launch of t...
18/09/2025
IRVING, Texas Following threats from the Federal Communications Commission and the announcement that the nations largest station group, Nexstar Media Group, wou...
18/09/2025
18 Sep 2025
VEON Inaugurates JazzCash Experience Lounge in Islamabad Dubai and Islamabad, September 18, 2025 - VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq: VEON), a global digital opera...
18/09/2025
Created by Tom Scharpling, Matt Berry and Natasha Lyonne, the new six-part serie...
18/09/2025
The eight-part sun-drenched thriller from Luther creator Neil Cross launches on ...
18/09/2025
Rohde & Schwarz announces new frequency models up to 54 GHz for R&S ZNB3000 vect...
18/09/2025
Individual phones could be tracked back to specific residential addresses
Sm...
18/09/2025
GeForce NOW is packing a monstrous punch this week. Dying Light: The Beast, the latest adrenaline fueled chapter in Techland's parkour meets survival horror...
18/09/2025
September 18 2025, 04:20 (PDT) Dolby Atmos arrives in Maruti Suzuki Victoris, e...
17/09/2025
Tech Focus: Audio Training, Part 2 - Manufacturers Offer Extensive Online Learni...
17/09/2025
Tech Focus: Audio Training, Part 1 - A1 Shortage Remains a Major-League Challeng...
17/09/2025
It was the ultimate convergence of pop culture and literary prestige: Last night, Dua Lipa brought her Service95 Book Club podcast to the stage for a special li...
17/09/2025
During August, streaming's share of TV viewing in Mexico showed an increase of 0.4% compared to the previous month, accounting for 25% of TV viewing.
Discl...
17/09/2025
CYPRESS, Calif. FOR-A America has named Jo Aun as senior manager of product engineering, a new role responsible for guiding the planning, development and rollou...
17/09/2025
PlayBox Neo, in partnership with CIS Group, a leading provider of media and broadcast technology solutions, has successfully deployed PlayBox Neo's Dual Cha...
17/09/2025
In a relationship that mirrors societal advances in sustainability, Brightline Lighting and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Headquarters have en...
17/09/2025
Clear-Com is proud to support the world-class productions of Alley Theatre, one of the oldest and largest nonprofit resident theatres in the United States. With...
17/09/2025
Arch Platform Technologies (www.archpt.io), a pioneer in automated, scalable cloud infrastructure for high-performance workflows, today announced a Strategic Co...
17/09/2025
Over 300 selected decision-makers from start-ups, corporates, and VC funds worldwide will gather for the third edition of the event, united by a single goal: to...
17/09/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, is excited to announce that its flagship Vantage platform and its next-generation AI capabilities re...
17/09/2025
Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions that profitably connect the right content to the right audience, proudly announces its three Best of Show...
17/09/2025
In a move to further establish a firm foothold across South East Asia, PlayBox Neo, the well-respected name in broadcast playout and channel branding, has appoi...
17/09/2025
Wisycom, a global leader in advanced wireless audio solutions, announced two major wireless solutions at IBC 2025 (Stand 8.D30). This includes the Portable RF-o...
17/09/2025
Six Berklee Alumni Win Emmy Awards The recipients were recognized for their contributions to acclaimed programs Severance, The Studio, The Penguin, SNL50: The...
17/09/2025
Applications Open for Berklee in Santo Domingo The weeklong contemporary music program will run January 5-10, 2026.
By
Colette Greenstein
September 17, 2025
...