The Toronto Raptors’ biggest superfan and the city’s mayor have a message for the team’s supporters: leave Kawhi Leonard alone.
In the aftermath of the team’s historic NBA championship win, the superstar player has been touring the city with his family and social media users appear to be documenting nearly every moment of it. Leonard was spotted at several trendy restaurants, Niagara Falls, a local Home Depot, and taking in a Toronto Blue Jays game in the past week.
The public’s intense fascination with the basketball star’s every move is partly because he will become a free agent on June 30 giving him free reign to choose what team he will join next season.
Torontonians have made it abundantly clear they want him to stay in the city, so much so that Toronto Mayor John Tory and Raptors’ superfan Nav Bhatia felt compelled to hold a press conference on Saturday in order to ask the public to dial it back.
“We are just trying to say to the fans ‘Yes we know you are very excited, you have reason to be excited but give him the space to eat where he wants to eat and shop where he wants to shop,’” Bhatia said. “If you see him say ‘Thank you’ and move on and let him enjoy himself.”
Bhatia, a longtime Raptors’ fan who has famously never missed a game in 24 years, said Leonard is being “harassed” every time he goes out in public in the city.
“We are not giving him the space, which he deserves,” he said. “Let him enjoy the city right now. Let him enjoy his privacy right now with his family. Just leave him alone.”
Tory asked that fans show their support for Leonard in a “Toronto way” by signing a newly created petition calling for the athlete to stay in the city.
“If the voice of the fans should be heard, which it should, then the best way to do that, the Toronto way to do that, is to sign this petition,” he said.
The petition, launched by Tory, Bhatia, and Paramount Fine Foods CEO Mohamad Fakih, has a goal of one million signatures and can be found at kawhiushouldstay.com.
“Please go and sign that petition and tell Kawhi he should stay,” Tory said. “We want thousands of people.”
“Millions and millions and millions,” Bhatia interjected.
The superfan said they would ensure Leonard sees the petition and reads the comments on it at his own “leisure.”
“I know we all of us, we want him to stay. All of us, all over Canada, we want him to stay. I believe he understands that,” Bhatia said.
