T'Wolves Senior VP & Chief Revenue Officer Ryan Tanke said that once fans "began hearing speculation that Kevin Garnett would be returning" to the franchise, they "snapped up several thousand tickets to upcoming games at Target Center," according to Rachel Blount of the Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE. In the short term, the team "is expecting a windfall in ticket and merchandise sales, and excitement over a player that Wolves coach Flip Saunders called 'an icon.'" T'Wolves VP/Communications Brad Ruiter said that 6,000 individual tickets for games this season "had been sold since last Thursday’s news that the Wolves had reacquired Garnett." The team on Friday also "began marketing" season tickets for the '15-16 season to new buyers. Ruiter said that "deposits have been paid on 400 packages already, one of the larger numbers in the NBA." Blount notes the T'Wolves starting today "will have Garnett jerseys and T-shirts available at its Target Center shops," and those items are "expected to be hot sellers." Tanke: "I don’t recall anything like this. ... To be honest, I think we underestimated the emotion behind it." Ruiter said that last Thursday, the team website "drew record traffic of 195,000 page views and 61,000 unique visitors as people sought details about Garnett’s return." Those numbers "were surpassed the following day, as the site drew 259,000 page views and 72,000 unique visitors" (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 2/25).
