Sometimes. When my manager went on sabbatical I had to reach out directly to other teams. We got so much done with that higher bandwidth, unmediated communication. OTOH my boss's boss was constantly breathing down my neck for status updates. There's a balance to everything I suppose.

Your boss forgot his other most important job: Being a communications router, not a communications bottleneck. There are many most important jobs for bosses.

That makes the manager a bottleneck. The manager should shield their direct reports from harm, but also enable independent cross-team communication/collaboration. Otherwise many new problems arise.