‘This is bigger than basketball’
Superfan Bhatia, adjusting to life without game, has other priorities
Hours before the NBA was flipped upside down by the coronavirus, Nav Bhatia walked around a room full of Toronto Raptors and squirted sanitizer on any set of hands he could find.
The Raptors were gathered at a hotel on the Lakeshore to celebrate the launch of the Nick Nurse Foundation — the head coach’s new charity in support of basketball, literacy and music programs for children around the city. Players, team staff, their families, the Hamilton band Arkells and Bhatia, a Raptors superfan, were among the people piled into a room at Hotel X.
Bhatia brought two “pretty good size” bottles of hand sanitizer with him — something he’d been lugging everywhere for a few weeks — and propped them up on the dinner table. Seated next to him was Raptors guard Fred VanVleet and his girlfriend, Shontai Neal.
“I had my hand sanitizer and I made everybody use it. Even the coach I gave it to,” Bhatia says in a phone interview from his Mississauga home. “Fred VanVleet, every 10 minutes, I gave him the hand sanitizer. And his wife was saying, ‘Listen to him. Superfan wants you to use it, so keep on going.’ Then Fred would say, ‘I just had it!’ And I said, ‘No, do it again.’ And his wife said, ‘Yes, do it again.’ ”
It had been an enjoyable evening for the Raptors, who had just returned home from a successful five-game western road trip. But later that night, news broke that Utah centre Rudy Gobert, who the Raptors had played two nights earlier, became the first NBA player to test positive for COVID-19. The league was suspended indefinitely.
“We got worried the next day because we were mingling with all the boys,” Bhatia says. He was set to appear at the Boys and Girls Club in Kingston the next morning, but decided it was safer to chat on Skype instead. The Raptors were subsequently tested for the coronavirus and all results came back negative. The night the NBA season came to an abrupt halt will forever be linked to the night North America turned its coronavirus response into overdrive. Since March 11, the city, country and much of the world have taken extreme measures to try to stop the spread of COVID-19. Group gatherings are prohibited. Schools are closed. Any non-essential stores or services have shut their doors. The message for everyone, including Bhatia and the Raptors, is simple: Stay home.
Life without basketball has been surreal for the 68-yearold, who has been in attendance for every Raptors home game since 1995, the team’s inaugural season. But before even discussing the potential of a lost Raptors season, Bhatia rightfully says the sport he calls his “addiction” is simply not important right now.
“This is bigger than basketball. Fans are missing basketball, we all are, but this is much more important than basketball,” Bhatia says. “We must survive and stay healthy. And basketball will come back. Everybody has to play their part in it. Every individual in this country, in this world, has to play their part in that.”
Once prompted, Bhatia admits he misses the pre-game interaction with fans at Scotiabank Arena the most. The superfan estimates he takes a “couple hundred” pictures with fans before every game, and another couple hundred after. Meeting people of all different backgrounds from across Canada and the world is his favourite part of being a Raptors seasonticket holder.
“It’s a lot of love and I genuinely want to use my basketball to bring the world together. The last game we attended, we had people from Italy, we had people visiting from France and they came and took a picture, and I usually let them wear my championship ring because I genuinely believe that it belongs to all the fans.”
Public photo ops extend far beyond the arena. Bhatia lets people try on his ring at the coffee shop, at work, at community events. It’s another reason why he always carries those two bottles of hand sanitizer with him. And the precautions don’t stop there.
“Every single morning I get it disinfected by a jeweller. I take care of it. I don’t want anybody to be sick, not just myself,” Bhatia says. “So every night, either after the game or at five in the morning, I go to a jeweller here in Mississauga and they disinfect my watch and my ring on a regular basis.”
Bhatia owns two Hyundai car dealerships and a Genesis store in the west end of the city and is responsible for about 190 employees. These days, he’s trying to make sure they are as safe and comfortable as possible. Ontario has exempted dealerships from its list of businesses forced to shut down.
“It’s important to stay healthy,” Bhatia says. “We put new policies in at work. We are cleaning it every two hours. We just want to make sure all our employees are OK, their families OK, and that nobody is unhealthy. We are being as careful as we can right now.”
And Bhatia has his accountants preparing for a longer interruption as well, so his employees “don’t have to worry about their jobs or about their income.”
In the meantime, the superfan is navigating a new challenge at home: spending more time with his wife. The Raptors have 41home games a year and when you add events for season-ticket holders, the odd road trip, his community engagements and work, he hasn’t been home this much in years.
And he’s still trying to figure out how it all works.
“Superfan has been stuck with his wife now in the evenings. For 25 or 30 years, I haven’t been home during the season and I think God is blessing her with my presence now,” he says in jest.
But the jokes stop when asked about who gets to choose what goes on TV these days. Sportsnet and TSN are combining to show the Raptors’ playoff run from last season.
“I’m still watching my games,” Bhatia says. “Nobody can stop that. I’ll be watching my games.” He pauses, then thinks twice. “If that continues happening, my wife might say later on that it’s better if I go to the game than stay home.”