Combo of KG plus wins was a can't-miss ticket

Last update: February 7, 2008 - 11:44 PM

Every day, Mike Nowakowski's clanging telephone reminds him that this is a hockey town.

Prospective customers ringing his Ticket King office near the Metrodome seeking Minnesota Wild tickets inform him so.

But he remembers the spring of 2004, when the Timberwolves reached the Western Conference finals and Kevin Garnett won the NBA's Most Valuable Player award.

"People can say it's a hockey town, but that place was rocking then," he said of Target Center. "It's fun to be a Timberwolves fan when they're doing well."

And profitable to re-sell their tickets, but that was only a brief open window for a franchise now in its 19th season. This season, Nowakowski's phone sat silent until the team won some games three weeks ago.

Those who did call probably had this Feb. 8 game against Boston -- the only real anticipated home game on a 41-game home schedule -- on their minds.

A week ago, his best seat in the house was priced at $620. When news broke that Garnett would not play tonight, it dropped to $350.

The Wolves' recent winning ways have restored what he calls a "pulse" in the ticket buyers' consciousness.

"The Timberwolves' market was pretty awful even with Kevin Garnett the last couple of years," Nowakowski said. "I think people thought that Kevin Garnett was the reason you bought a ticket and went to Target Center, and I don't think that was the case. If they win games, people will go. We're not talking Michael Jordan here. We're talking Kevin Garnett."

JERRY ZGODA

Uber-commuting fan is devoted but disappointed

After he heard the news that Kevin Garnett would not play tonight at Target Center and before he boarded a plane bound for Minneapolis, Mitsuaki Ohno posted these words on the Star Tribune's Timberwolves blog:

"Wow, that's too bad for me. 12 hours of flight from Tokyo and NO KG ... was looking forward to watch this game since last Oct."

His family came to Minnesota in 1989 because his father worked for IBM and was assigned work in Rochester. That also was the year the Wolves played their first game.

Ohno, a junior-high student, learned English from a tutor that winter and he learned to love the state's new basketball team. Years later, he grew to love a dynamic player named Kevin Garnett.

Now a Sun Microsystems support engineer, he's a Wolves season ticket holder who attends maybe two games a year. The rest, Ohno donates. This season, the fellow whose e-mail address includes "kg21" chose, of course, a weekend that offers games against Garnett's new Boston team and Toronto.

"I am a big KG fan but he is gone," he e-mailed from Japan earlier this week. "So I like to watch him and confirm that he is gone."

JERRY ZGODA