Spirit of giving
Social worker says charity a better fan campaign to convince Leonard to stay
Encourage Kawhi to stay by donating to a cause that reflects his values, fan says,
Teneile Warren watched as Toronto pelted Kawhi Leonard with flashy freebies, and something felt wrong. The real estate, the restaurants, unlimited Kraft Dinner — why would the Raptors superstar want those things?
“I think it’s a great campaign, it’s excellent publicity, (but) I think it’s disconnected from Kawhi,” said the playwright, chef and social services co-ordinator from Kitchener. “I just kept seeing something bigger.”
After winning the NBA championship on Thursday night, a franchise and national first, Toronto is desperate for the twotime MVP to stay with the Raptors — but Leonard becomes a free agent in a mere two weeks.
Even before the finals started, dozens of GTA businesses had signed on to the “Ka’wine and Dine” campaign, which offered Leonard a lifetime of free food, shopping and services, from oysters and haircuts to tattoos and custom suits. The CEO of a condo brokerage offered him a choice of luxury penthouses. Kraft Canada offered him free KD.
Warren wants Toronto to try something else: “KaWine and Give,” by donating to a charity that reflects Leonard’s — and Toronto’s — values.
The day after the Raptors advanced to the finals, Warren published an article on ByBlacks.com entitled, “Dear Toronto, Do You Even Know Who Kawhi Leonard Really Is?”
As Warren pointed out, Leonard is a famously private, lowkey guy. He doesn’t use social media. After signing a contract for $95 million (U.S.) with the San Antonio Spurs, he continued to drive a 1997 Chevy Tahoe. He has an unyielding work ethic, logging hours at the gym after he finishes games, and is very close with his mother and sisters. Most of his waking hours not spent playing basketball appear to be spent at home.
At a Spurs team dinner at a San Antonio restaurant, he once pulled out a bag of apples and ate 12 of them with a knife and fork, muttering “Apple time, apple time.” OK, that didn’t actually happen, but the Twitter meme was believable enough that lots of fans thought it was true. As the comedian who started the joke wrote, “Kawhi really is a different dude.”
Though his public comments are few, Leonard has spoken about his charitable values.
As Warren noted, after visiting Ronald McDonald House Charities in San Antonio, a home for seriously ill children undergoing treatment, Leonard referenced his respect for Earl Lloyd, the first Black player in the NBA.
“He was involved in the community a lot,” Leonard told a reporter from the San Antonio Express-News in 2017. “He didn’t want to be known as just a basketball player. He wanted to be involved with the community.”
The year before, again at Ronald McDonald House — a place he visited for years in a row — Leonard spoke to another reporter. “To be in my position, you always have to give back,” he said.
In her article, Warren suggested two different Toronto charities she thought might resonate with Leonard: Emily’s House, a hospice that offers palliative care for children with life-limiting illnesses and respite care for their families, and the Rexdale Community Health Centre, which runs a boys’ basketball league.
Her challenge galvanized a group of Toronto philanthropists, and the #kawineandgive campaign has been slowly gaining traction ever since.
“In the span of about 48 hours, it was shared with me about 10 different times,” said Aneil Gokhale, director of philanthropy at the Toronto Foundation. “There was clearly something here.”
The Toronto Foundation is itself a registered charity, an organization that makes it easier for individuals to start a personal charitable foundation or for groups to pool philanthropic dollars. Gokhale, Keita Demming and Paul Nazareth, who all work in philanthropic and social innovation circles, organized the KaWineandGive Foundation to collect donations in Leonard’s honour.
Ultimately, they hope to contact Leonard and ask where he would like to send the charitable dollars. (They didn’t want to bother him during the finals.) But if they can’t get through, they will donate it to a charity that fits the spirit of Warren’s article.
“Part of what I think makes Toronto amazing and makes Canada amazing is that we have free health care, we have a sound welfare system. It has its flaws, it has its issues,” Demming said. “But what makes Toronto such an amazing city is how we take care of everybody, and we do it differently from how a lot of other big basketball cities would.”
The Ka’wine and Dine campaign has since added a charitable component, “Ka’wine and Kind.” Meanwhile, citizens and businesses keep offering whatever they think might help, whether that’s a “housewarming” plant or an unused Presto pass, the latter an offer from Cincinnati Reds baseball player and Etobicoke native Joey Votto.
If they could say one thing to Leonard, it would be some variation of, “Please stay.” If they could say two things, though, those involved all want him to know how thankful they are.
“He’s definitely left Toronto better, if he leaves or if he stays,” Demming said.
Warren, meanwhile, wants us to look beyond the team and the win. “What do we want to make of this moment?” she asked. “How do we make this moment last beyond the Raptors?”
“To be in my position, you always have to give back.” KAWHI LEONARD TORONTO RAPTORS