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Mail & Guardian
22-07-2025
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
Diabetes is a disease that thrives on inequity
South Africa must treat the conditions that breed diabetes, including by making healthy food affordable. Photo: File It's not every day one finds themselves navigating the buzz of McCormick Place convention centre in downtown Chicago, dwarfed by towering banners, energised scientists and a swirling stream of conversations in a dozen different languages, all united by a single cause: tackling diabetes. For me, attending the 2025 American Diabetes Association (ADA) Scientific Sessions wasn't just about science. It was a reckoning. A moment to understand, reflect and reimagine what this disease means for my country, and for me as a South African woman. I arrived late on Friday, 20 June, after a long-haul flight with cramped legs, airport sandwiches and anticipation. By the time I checked into my hotel, I had missed most of the day's sessions. But there was one I was determined to catch, and I made it just in time. The session was called Social Drivers of Health Needs and Cost. What unfolded in that packed hall was less a session and more a raw, honest confrontation with reality. Dr Jennifer Wallace, the moderator, opened with something that hit me square in the chest: 'If we want to treat diabetes effectively, we cannot ignore the world outside the clinic.' It's a sentiment that resonates deeply in South Africa, where the world outside the clinic, townships, informal settlements and communities living in food deserts, is precisely where the battle against Type 2 diabetes is being lost. Dr Marcus Lee told a story about a patient who managed her insulin levels by eating less. I could immediately picture women back home doing the same, sacrificing meals so their medication lasts longer. Alicia Ramos, a community health navigator, reminded us that for many, the choice is not just between food and medicine, but between survival and wellness. The truth? Type 2 diabetes is no longer a condition we see in sick or older people. It's knocking loudly on the doors of the working class, of families earning just enough to survive but not enough to eat well. Saturday's session, Type 2: From Biology to Behaviour: Is it all in the Family?' took the conversation even deeper. The message was clear: diabetes doesn't just run in our blood. It runs in our habits, our kitchens and our cultures. In South Africa, many of us grow up eating pap, vetkoek, sugary tea, deep-fried carbs and processed meats. These aren't indulgences. They're affordable staples. They have a high-calorie count and they don't break the bank. When healthier options cost twice as much or simply aren't available, how can we realistically expect people to choose better? The session unpacked how family history and intergenerational behaviour create cycles that are hard to break. But what stood out to me was the shift in tone. This wasn't about blaming families for bad choices. It was about compassion, care and giving people the tools and environments they need to choose health. Back home that means school programmes, public health campaigns and food subsidies. But, I thought, are we doing enough to combat the crisis? Or is our inherent socio-economic system jeopardising the problem? Later that day, a quieter ePoster session titled Obesity-Associated Diabetes and Cancer Risk offered a chilling insight: Type 2 diabetes is tied not only to heart disease, but also to several cancers, especially in women. As someone who has watched family members battle both diabetes and cancer, this hit hard. It's another layer of urgency for prevention and early screening, especially in women's health initiatives. In a session, aptly named Are You What You Eat?, the spotlight turned to nutrition. But rather than scolding or moralising, the speakers reframed the conversation. People aren't unhealthy because they don't care. They're unhealthy because they don't have options. One poster presented data showing measurable improvements in insulin sensitivity from small upgrades in food quality, such as switching to whole grains or reducing sodium. But even those small steps can be unattainable luxuries in under-resourced communities. Junk food is cheaper than a tomato and provides more energy per serving, so with a limited income, why would I choose the tomato? We're treating diet like a choice, but it's often dictated by economics. By Sunday, the most emotional session of the conference, Rising Risks, Real Solutions: Tackling Childhood Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity, laid bare a terrifying trend. More children are getting Type 2 diabetes, and earlier. It's aggressive, fast-moving and robs young people of a healthy adulthood. South Africa isn't immune from this; we're on the front lines. The success stories came from schools with integrated nutrition and mental health programmes. This kind of holistic care could transform South African schools. I wondered how much we could change if our health and education systems worked in tandem (on the ground in communities) and how much this synergy could change how we approach diabetes in the future. The final sessions I attended on Monday were visionary. They explored how hunger signals are regulated in the brain, how muscle mass affects metabolism and how next-gen drugs are not just managing, but potentially reversing diabetes. The promise? Therapies that promote weight loss, cardiovascular protection and even remission. The problem? Access. I learnt a lot about the various medicines on the market, but just because they exist, doesn't mean they're readily available. In South Africa, even metformin can be out of reach for some. GLP-1 therapies such as semaglutide are available (technically), but are they accessible to the majority? That's where Danish pharmaceutical multinational Novo Nordisk and others like it have a crucial role to play. Novo Nordisk has been pioneering research and partnerships for more than 25 years to improve the lives of people with diabetes and obesity. This symposium made me think about equity in a different light. Equity isn't just about distribution, it's about systems, partnerships and policies that bring the future to those who need it most. And equity is about having choice and the option to choose. Being denied options is being denied agency. What I took from ADA 2025 wasn't just knowledge, it was clarity. Type 2 diabetes is no longer a niche concern or an affluent disease. It's a social epidemic, shaped as much by economics as by biology. South Africa must act: boldly and collaboratively. From health policies to supermarket aisles, from school lunchboxes to transport infrastructure. If we want to treat diabetes, we must treat the conditions that breed it. That means making healthy food accessible. That means reimbursing community health workers. That means equipping clinics with tools to screen not only glucose levels, but social risk. The shift isn't just from control to cure. It's from treatment to transformation. I arrived in Johannesburg jetlagged and overloaded with information, but I returned with purpose. Diabetes is not a disease that exists in isolation, it is something proliferated by our socio-economic systems. And if we don't change our systems, diabetes will continue to become more and more of a concern. In the end, health isn't just about science. It's about justice. Katie Mohamed is the chief executive of BrandFusion, W-Suite and ChangeHub.
Chicago Tribune
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Illinois is wooing foreign tourists, despite a hostile White House and a blue-red divide
Chicago hosted an influential travel group at McCormick Place last week, putting on a show to win international tourist and convention business. From a blowout opening night at the Field Museum to tours of neighborhoods, sports venues and dining hotspots, the program was impressive. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker were on hand to give friendly, uncontroversial welcomes. But like most of the attendees, they danced around the elephant in the room. When it comes to attracting foreign visitors to the U.S., there's no ignoring President Donald J. Trump. The conference opened Sunday as a 'No Kings' rally attracted thousands of protesters downtown, a military parade rolled through Washington, D.C., and U.S. troops patrolled Los Angeles in a Trump-ordered show of force. While the conference-goers were heading out on Monday for an evening meant to showcase the Magnificent Mile, Trump was urging U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stage more armed roundups of unauthorized migrants in Chicago, New York and L.A. As the tour operators and travel writers sampled Mr. Beef sandwiches and Pequod's pizzas, the administration proposed a ban on travel from up to 36 more countries, on top of 19 travel bans already in effect. Trump's tariffs have weakened the dollar, which makes foreign travel to the U.S. more affordable. But no one should fool themselves about a trade war being good for business — tourism included. No amount of catchy marketing can easily overcome America's hostility to the rest of the planet since Trump took office in January. Foreign visitors have reason to worry they could be detained at customs, their devices searched, their visas canceled. So how does the U.S. Travel Association cope with an administration throwing up so many roadblocks at many of the same countries it's trying to woo? Geoff Freeman, chief executive of the travel group, acknowledged the 'growing perception' that America doesn't want foreign visitors. 'That perception is costing us,' he told conference-goers. 'The world is watching.' In an interview, Freeman said the administration, including Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, finally is getting the message being more welcoming to visitors, especially with the FIFA World Cup coming to 11 U.S. cities next year and L.A. hosting the Summer Olympics in 2028. Yet that's the same Secretary Duffy who just threatened to withhold federal transportation funding from cities such as Chicago where the most vehement anti-ICE protests take place. The us-vs.-them divide that characterizes the administration's approach to blue states didn't appear to be spilling over to the travel officials exhibiting at the conference. 'Travel shouldn't be a debate on blue or red,' noted Cole Irwin, global travel and trade director for deep-red South Dakota. 'We don't want to turn anyone away.' And travelers open to new experiences aren't concerned with a state's politics, according to Jane Powell, executive director of a tourism group in South Carolina. The 'whole blue state, red state thing' is more of an issue in the media than among travelers she interacts with, Powell said. Dan Marengo of California's Visit Berkeley acknowledged what he considers 'crazy rhetoric coming out of Washington,' but believes 'California is too powerful a destination for people to stay away.' Here's hoping. Illinois tourism officials are praying the Trump chill doesn't last. The Choose Chicago tourism group has made something of a post-pandemic comeback, hiring a new chief executive, Kristen Reynolds, and launching a new ad blitz. The $4 million ad campaign features the slogan, 'Never Done. Never Outdone,' which we doubt will become a viral sensation like, 'I Love New York' or 'Keep Austin Weird.' But it represents a vast improvement over the baffling 'Chicago Not in Chicago' tourism campaign that bombed in 2022. We'll be watching the numbers. Here's what we know about tourism growth in our city last year. Chicago welcomed an estimated 55.3 million visitors in 2024, marking a 6.5% increase from the previous year, according to a 2025 Choose Chicago report. Preliminary data shows that international visitation exceeded 2 million for the first time since 2019 — a year-over-year jump of more than 10%. Tourism generated an estimated $20.6 billion in total economic impact. On the conventions and events front, 1,891 meetings and conventions booked by Choose Chicago were held in 2024, contributing more than $3 billion to the local economy. The city and state have put their best foot forward, and now it's up to foreign visitors to decide whether they want to venture into a country that has become, to many, Trump Country. Here's hoping Chicago's rekindled tourism efforts are not only 'Never Outdone,' but also never 'done in' by whatever comes next from Washington.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
An Illinois Building Was a Bird Killer. A Simple Change Made a World of Difference.
An Illinois Building Was a Bird Killer. A Simple Change Made a World of Difference. The morning promised to be deadly. High above Chicago, in the predawn dark, flew an airborne river of migratory birds. It was peak spring migration traffic, in late April, and the tiny travelers were arriving at one of the most perilous points along their journey. These birds, inhabitants of forests and grasslands, do not perceive glass as solid and get confused by its reflections. Bright city lights seem to attract them, luring them into glassy canyons. The gleaming buildings of Chicago, curving along the shore of Lake Michigan, are especially lethal. A call went out to volunteers across the city: Be ready to hit the streets early to rescue the injured and document the dead. But at the building that has long been the city's most notorious bird killer, a sprawling lakefront conference venue that claimed almost a thousand birds on a single day in October 2023, new protections were in place. The vast glass windows and doors of the building, called Lakeside Center at McCormick Place, are overlaid with a pattern of close, opaque dots. Applied last summer to help birds perceive the glass, the treatment's early results are nothing short of remarkable. During fall migration, deaths were down by about 95 percent when compared with the two previous autumns. Now monitoring is underway during the first spring migration since the dots, with implications for glassy structures far beyond Chicago. Across North America, with Toronto an early leader, a growing number of bird-friendly policies and decisions by individual building managers are helping make cities safer for birds. On that recent morning, David Willard, an ornithologist at the Field Museum, set off on a lakefront path toward McCormick Place. Known as the Bird Man to workers there, Dr. Willard has been tallying the building's avian victims for almost 50 years. It wasn't yet 6 a.m., and he wondered aloud about what he would find. As he walked, white-throated sparrows flitted around shrubs, a Baltimore oriole called from a tree and a green heron flew by. The park seemed full of returning birds. If there were to be casualties at McCormick despite the treatment, Dr. Willard said, it would be on a morning like this one. 'This is a good test,' he said. The Deadliest Known Building Researchers have estimated that hundreds of millions of birds die hitting buildings every year in the United States. These strikes are believed to be one of the factors behind an almost 30 percent drop in North American birds since 1970. Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities in the country for migrating birds, according to research by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And no building was known to be more lethal than McCormick Place's Lakeside Center. Dr. Willard has been cataloging the dead there since 1978, when he was the Field Museum's collection manager for birds. He had heard that migrators sometimes ran into McCormick and, one morning before work, he decided to check it out. Below the glass were two dead birds. 'I sometimes wonder if I hadn't found anything, whether I would have ever gone back,' Dr. Willard said. He started daily monitoring during migrations in 1982. From that year through 2024, he and colleagues have documented 41,789 birds killed by the glass at McCormick. Over the years, as the death toll mounted, advocates pushed for changes. McCormick managers said they tried a series of interventions: In the 1980s, strips of netting; in the '90s, bird-of-prey calls and silhouettes. They commissioned a nine-acre park of native prairie and woodlands on the roof of a lower parking deck, hoping it would draw birds away from the glass. Closing curtains during events, though, was a step too far. 'For us, our priority was making sure that our customers were satisfied,' said Larita Clark, chief executive of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the municipal corporation that owns McCormick Place. 'They rent space like this from us because of the view of the lake.' Hundreds of birds continued to die each year during spring and fall migrations. Often, it was a few each morning, but sometimes dozens in a day. Then, on Oct. 5, 2023, Dr. Willard climbed the lakefront steps to the building's walkway on his routine inspection to find it littered with dead and injured birds. Shocked by the sheer volume, struggling to save the living while gathering the dead, he called a colleague for help. 'They were continuing to crash as we were picking them up,' Dr. Willard recalled. The casualties were mostly warblers, but also thrushes, sparrows and others. On the way back to the museum, they carried plastic bags bulging with roughly 975 dead birds. 'What Can We Do?' As news of the episode ricocheted around the world, public outrage was unlike anything the managers at McCormick had seen. Calls and emails poured in. The American Bird Conservancy took out a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune with a headline reading: 'One Night. One Building. 1,000 Birds Dead.' Ms. Clark said she reached out to the Field Museum, federal wildlife officials and bird advocacy groups with a question: 'What can we do so that this will never happen again?' Some of the earliest research on how to make glass safer for birds was conducted by Daniel Klem Jr., an ornithologist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. He found that falcon silhouettes were not effective. Birds did not register them as predators and simply flew into the adjacent glass. Instead, to effectively deter birds, the glass needed a pattern over its entire surface. A distance of no more than two inches would prevent even tiny hummingbirds from trying to dart through, he said. Eventually Ms. Clark and her team decided on the dots. The treatment cost $1.2 million, paid for by the state of Illinois. Ms. Clark chose the pattern herself, and it was installed in a hectic three-month period last summer to be in place for fall migration. Visitors don't seem to even notice the dots from the inside, she said. She knows of no pushback. But one problem area remains: a transparent pedestrian bridge that was not treated. It's a tiny area compared with the two football fields of dotted glass, but it now claims an outsize number of the victims. Of 45 bird deaths at McCormick last fall, 27 had struck the bridge. Managers at McCormick are still deciding whether to treat it. 'We're waiting on some data,' said Pat Allen, who oversees operations at the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority. 'We've got to justify what we're spending.' Two Different Scenes On the recent spring morning at McCormick, the sky still orange with sunrise, one bird lay dead under treated glass: a gray catbird. But Dr. Willard and I watched as dozens more flew toward the windows and, as they got close, seemed to put on the brakes, pulling up or veering away. 'My feeling is that in the past those would have probably hit and, at least some portion of them, died,' Dr. Willard said. Walking around the mammoth building, there were no more casualties beneath the treated windows. But at the untreated glass of the pedestrian bridge, it was another story. Four birds lay on the pavement, almost in a row, and Dr. Willard knelt to pick each one up. The dead went into a plastic bag. One, a white-throated sparrow, came around in his hands, trying to flutter away, and he carefully placed it in a paper bag to be released closer to the lake. Farther along, we came upon three more dead birds and another stunned one, all casualties of the untreated glass on the bridge. Two were bright yellow warblers called common yellowthroats, perhaps on their way back from Central America or the Caribbean. It was evidence that the bridge needs the film dots, too, Dr. Willard said. Word of the treatment's effectiveness is already traveling throughout the city and beyond. 'It started last fall when some of the results were coming out,' said Paul Groleau, vice president of Feather Friendly, the company that manufactured the window dots. 'I had people emailing me directly saying, 'We want what McCormick Place put on the building.'' Conservationists are using the building's success as they continue a longtime campaign to implement a bird-friendly design ordinance in Chicago. 'I think that may win the day for us in City Hall,' said Annette Prince, director of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors. 'This is not just a maybe fix, this is going to make a significant difference in bird mortality, and McCormick Place is the poster child.'
Chicago Tribune
15-05-2025
- Science
- Chicago Tribune
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Sue the T. rex's journey to the Field Museum
Our city — the one of 'Big Shoulders' — has always sought out the massive. Chicago has been home to the tallest building (when it was known as Sears Tower), the largest convention center (McCormick Place) in North America, and even one of the world's largest wastewater treatment plants (Stickney Water Reclamation Plant which, OK, is in Cicero, just outside the city limits). The opportunity to increase the city's stature once again materialized in October 1997. That's when the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton became available at an auction hosted by Sotheby's. But bringing the fossil lovingly named after its discoverer to Chicago wouldn't have been possible without the combination of Sue Hendrickson and a flat tire. As the Field Museum celebrates 25 years since the debut of Sue, here's a look back at how the T. rex made its way from the Black Hills of South Dakota to Chicago. The vehicle of a dinosaur-hunting crew planning to leave a site in western South Dakota at the end of an expedition was found to have a flat tire. While others went into town to make the repair, Sue Hendrickson, a member of that crew, decided to have a look in an area the expedition had not searched. It was a good choice. While examining a cliff's side, she discovered a Tyrannosaurus rex specimen — the largest, most complete and best preserved T. rex found to that date. The dinosaur skeleton — which was estimated to be 90% complete — became known as Sue not because of its sex (undetermined) but after its finder. Peter Larson, whose Black Hills Institute of Geological Research Inc., excavated the tyrannosaur, paid Maurice Williams, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe on whose land the fossil was found, $5,000. The fossil was seized by federal authorities who claimed it was illegally removed from Williams' ranch, which was held in trust by the government. The Black Hills Institute was charged with violation of the U.S. Antiquities Act, theft of U.S. governmental property and theft of Native American tribal property. Long before Sue's discovery, Peter Larson and his brother Neal had built Black Hills Institute on a reputation for highly skilled fossil preparations and exhibit mountings, selling them to a variety of private collectors and public museums, including the Field Museum. When Hendrickson found Sue on Williams' land, the Larson brothers thought the extraordinary fossil would make a dream come true. They were going to build a nonprofit museum in Hill City, their hometown, drawing tourists from nearby Mount Rushmore. Instead, the legal battles Sue sparked nearly bankrupted them. The U.S. attorney's office in South Dakota, setting out to prove that the Larsons had illegally taken Sue and other fossils from federal lands, spent years and millions of dollars investigating the institute, raiding the company and carting off fossils and business records on several occasions. In the resulting six-week trial, however, out of 146 felony charges, the jury convicted Peter Larson on two charges of failing to declare several thousand dollars he had carried with him on two business trips outside the U.S. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Sue's fossil bones technically were a constituent of the soil, part of the land, and belonged to the landowner, Williams. The Supreme Court let that decision stand. Peter Larson, whose success as a private fossil-hunter had raised the hackles of many academic paleontologists, was sent to prison on federal charges that many South Dakotans came to regard as an abuse of prosecutorial power 'I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy,' Larson later told the Tribune. 'This was so hard on my wife, worse for her than for me. On every visiting day she traveled hundreds of miles and was there for me. But the whole ordeal drained her, and when I got out (on Dec. 8, 1998), she decided she didn't want to be married anymore. That was the hardest thing, to lose her.' A judge awarded ownership of Sue to Williams, and the government, acting as his trustee, decided the best way to serve his interests was to auction the skeleton. The bidding for Sue started at $500,000 and rose by $100,000 increments, quickly breaking into the millions as bidders on the floor and on phones competed for what auctioneer Redden called 'a world treasure.' The crowd in the sales room gasped as the bidding broke through $5 million and kept climbing. At the $7 million mark, most of the would-be buyers dropped out and tension mounted in the room as the time between bids lengthened. Finally, after several warnings, auctioneer David Redden knocked Sue down at $7.6 million — for a total of $8.36 million. The auction took little more than eight minutes. In the end, bidding came down to the Field Museum, the J.I. Kislack Foundation of Miami, the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, and the Dallas Museum of Natural History. Redden said a private buyer was also in the final bidding but refused to identify him. Later, McCarter said he was never confident that Field would come away the winner. 'I was very nervous' as the bidding progressed, he said. He declined to reveal how high the museum had been willing to go to buy Sue. At the time, it was the highest price paid for a fossil (until a stegosaurus nicknamed 'Apex' grabbed that title in 2024). Williams received $7.6 million of the money the museum paid for Sue. But Williams never planned to visit the fossil that once was buried on his land. 'Everybody is knowledgeable about the amount of money (Sue) brought into our family,' Williams, father of four grown children, said in a 2000 telephone interview with the Tribune. 'What we got out of the thing, we're handling it pretty well. Some of the children have used it for education and whatever. 'People here don't talk anymore about that thing.' The Black Hills Institute claimed it had a trademark on the name Sue and that the name couldn't be used without permission. 'The trademark we have on Sue is exactly the same as … Mickey Mouse,' said Marion Zenker, marketing coordinator for the private fossil-hunting institute. 'Walt Disney didn't own the mouse, but he still owned the name.' On April 15, 1998, the dinosaur formerly known as Sue then became formally be known as Sue. The news came as a disappointment to the thousands of kids who entered a contest to give the dinosaur a new name after legal disputes over licensing of the name Sue erupted. But museum officials conceded that lawyers advised that the contest-winning name — 'Dakota' — had the potential to cause legal problems as well, given that it was already used for several products. Hendrickson — who did not have a high school diploma — received her first university credentials in the form of an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Illinois Chicago. The professional fossil hunter and self-taught archaeologist and paleontologist with a namesake T. rex at the Field Museum came to paleontology by way of an early career diving for sunken treasure and collecting fish specimens in the Caribbean. She was a voracious reader as a child in Munster, and decided against a formal university education after talking things over with the head of marine biology at the University of Washington. Hendrickson had always been a hard worker, her mother said, and hoped that her success and the recognition she received serves as inspiration for other people who pursue their ambitions without the benefit of a college degree. Sue — whose chocolate-brown skeleton took 12 people 30,000 hours to remove from rock — debuted in Stanley Field Hall (the lobby inside the Field Museum). 'Sue has a number of features never before observed in the other T. rex skeletons,' Tribune reporter William Mullen wrote. 'The new information underscores what scientists for the last several years have been postulating: that dinosaurs are closely related to birds.' 'Evolving Planet' opened, thanks to a donation by Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel. The $17 million permanent exhibit used video, interactive displays, paintings and lots and lots of fossils to chronicle the evolution of life on Earth over 4 billion years. Sue's new smaller but much more dramatic digs on the museum's second floor opened. The new home also incorporated changes in the presentation of the skeleton — including a much fuller chest thanks to the mounting of formerly separated gastralia, or 'belly ribs' — which were all carefully detailed on accompanying labels that help tell a bigger story. 'We wanted to use Sue as a vehicle to inform the public that science is never done,' said museum CEO Richard Lariviere. 'You're always understanding.' Thanks for reading! Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago's past.
CBS News
13-05-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Draft lottery leaves Chicago Bulls at No. 12
Back in 2008, the Chicago Bulls had a slim 1.7% chance of winning the NBA Draft lottery, and lucked into picking Derrick Rose at No. 1 overall. Facing the exact same long odds this year, with the lottery once again taking place in the Bulls' backyard at McCormick Place, President of Basketball Operations Artūras Karnišovas was hoping lightning would strike twice — with the Bulls slotted 12th in the sweepstakes for likely No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg of Duke. But lightning did not strike twice. The Bulls are staying at No. 12. The Dallas Mavericks won the draft lottery, giving them the No. 1 pick. The NBA Draft is set for Wednesday June 25.
