Kishi is troubled by Sakura’s popularity among the readers. While he was drawing covers, it was easy drawing naruto and sasuke, but for sakura kishi have to spend more time re-drawing and adjusting, worrying that he might draw her ugly. sakura’s family is not revealed because of popularity reasons, but hinata with low number of appearances were consistently popular with the readers, kishi once had the idea to change hinata to the heroine.
< LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL I'M SO DONE
imo the Hinata being the heroine was SP's ideas, and since EVERYONE IS kittening AWARE OF THAT, they told Kishimoto to say those things like it was his ideas.
Kishi is SP's puppet now, he has to clean all the kitten they have done.