Uber-commuting fan is devoted but disappointed

Last update: February 7, 2008 - 11:21 PM

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 ... I 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 email 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

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