Precious Brady-Davis, who works as the Sierra Club’s regional communications director, is campaigning to be one of the nine commissioners of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which manages stormwater mitigation and wastewater treatment for Cook County. Brady-Davis, who grew up in public housing in Nebraska and was the first openly transgender contestant on the reality show Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, published a memoir, I Have Always Been Me, in 2021. The Reader interviewed her by phone recently. Brady-Davis fielded questions while caring for her two-year-old daughter Zayn, who she and her transmasculine husband Myles Brady Davis are raising together in their Hyde Park home. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Katie Prout: Could you start by talking a bit about your background?

Brady-Davis: Absolutely. For over 15 years, I’ve worked in nonprofit management. I started working at Chicago’s Center on Halsted, where I was the youth outreach coordinator for several years. After that, I went to work at Columbia College, where I oversaw national diversity recruitment.

After 2016, with the election of Donald John Trump, I felt that I couldn’t just sit on the sidelines of history as we watched Trump take action to remove all of these environmental protections. I knew this was just the beginning, that more environmental rights and environmental regulations would be slashed. And so, I went to work at the Sierra Club, on a campaign called Beyond Coal that works to retire coal plants.

Working at the Center on Halsted, I led a $1.6 million CDC HIV prevention grant. The MWRD is protecting the water for the citizens of Cook County, so it’s still an extension of protecting public health.

What does the MWRD do?

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District is the agency that manages stormwater and wastewater. What the MWRD does is they take the water that leaves our home, they clean that water, and then they push it back out into [Lake Michigan]. That’s the essence of what the MWRD does: they protect the source of our drinking water.

They’re also the second-largest landowner in Cook County, so they manage public land. There’s a myriad of uses for that public land. They often lease much of it so that the taxpayers benefit from the revenue of those leases.

The nine commissioners are the folks who run the agency. They run the district, they oversee the budget, they create policy.

Nonprofit management is not new to me. I come to nonprofit management with a great deal of diversity, equity, and inclusion experience. I come to this work with a great gaze of creativity. What would it look like to see installations across Chicago, collaborating with artists to collect rainwater to ease the burden on our sewers? We could fund artists, and we could also educate the public about climate change. What would it look like to have decorative barrels across Chicago that store rain?

When and how did you first learn about the MWRD? What compelled you to try and join it?

I came to know about the MWRD because of Deb Shore. Deb Shore was a commissioner who served at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District for 15 years. She was recently appointed by President Biden to be the Region Five EPA Administrator. She was also the first out lesbian, outside of a judge, who was elected in Cook County. I’ve long followed Deb’s career and have been inspired by her.

When I am elected, I will be the first Black trans woman elected in Chicago history. I’m also an environmentalist. I talk about having this history of diversity, equity, and inclusion: I see environmental justice as another diversity issue.

Why is diverse representation in public bodies important?

Far too often, I think the population being served isn’t actually reflected in the government, and often their needs don’t get met— particularly poor people, particularly people of color, people who are most impacted, you know, from climate change. I believe in inspiring the future, and particularly LGBTQ youth. We deserve to be in every sector of society, not just one. We have the right to sit in positions of power. We are qualified, we are our leaders. And I think [our election] helps change the stigma and the perception that LGBTQ folks, and trans people in particular, have faced.

How does MWRD interact with residents’ daily lives?

So let’s say that Lake Michigan is flooding, and it’s flooding your basement. The MWRD is responsible for that, but nothing that has to do with your water bill, and nothing to do with the water department: that is local and on the city. The flooding is on the county. If you’re having issues with stormwater around your home, the MWRD is responsible for that. You would reach out to one of the nine commissioners who are elected countywide.

How can folks learn more about the MWRD?

The MWRD has two in-person board meetings [a month]. They’re also online: folks can watch them virtually. Those meetings are open to the public, [but] I’d like to increase access to them as a commissioner. Currently, they happen at 10:30 AM. That’s not really accessible for the general public, for working-class people. So I think it’d be great to have more meetings at night.

The MWRD is also on social media. Every day, they do a historical photo of the agency [on Instagram]. There’s lots of cool details. I follow it, it’s very informative.

Is the MWRD an agency that can launch political careers in Cook County?

I think in Cook County, there’s a myriad of offices that you could say that about. I know that in this race in particular, there are folks who are standing behind certain candidates in this race, because they’ve circulated petitions for them. They actually don’t have qualified experience. I find that troubling and disheartening, and I don’t think it serves the residents of Cook County.

I think we need folks who understand the need to protect Lake Michigan and to protect the residents of our city. This is about public health. I mean, we’re seeing people across Cook County having to boil their water, like in Dixmoor. There are actual issues with the water. We need to actually advocate for people of color. When people of color make insurance claims on flooding, they often don’t become resolved. We need actual folks who are committed, solid public servants, and not people who just want to get a jumpstart to their political careers.

How is water quality a public health issue?

If contaminants got into our water, it would make the water unsafe to drink. We absolutely saw, catastrophically, what happens when we don’t have solid leadership in positions of folks who care for our water. We saw what happened in Flint. The same thing could happen if we didn’t have solid leadership at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, and didn’t continue to have that leadership.

What are your top, hit-the- ground-running initiatives you’d be championing at the MWRD?

First, I want to prioritize environmental justice projects that advance community resilience. How can we support local communities? That would be one idea, creating a rain barrel project in a place like Englewood. Second, how do we increase and advance green infra- structure across Chicago? Third, engaging the stakeholders and increasing diversity in terms of people who are engaged in the work.

So [my priorities are] advancing community projects and community resilience, centering environmental justice, increasing green infrastructure, and then advancing community outreach, in particular to young people in marginalized communities. I think the MWRD can do violence prevention. They can engage young people in programs about the water reclamation district, and serve as an incubator to the trades, educating folks through community programs and community conversations.

How could MWRD work on violence prevention?

What would it be like to take marginalized young people from the south and west sides on a tour of one of the plants? What would it look like to have environmental programming for young people specifically? There’s a myriad of green spaces around Chicago, you know. We’d love to immerse young people in nature, in and outside of their communities across our great cities. I think that there’s more work that we can do, that I would champion as a commissioner. I would champion creating a task force to engage on environmental issues, and violence prevention should be one of those tenants.

The commissioners, the mayor, and the City Council should come together. Nothing in this conversation [about violence prevention] has come up about green space. There’s this current conversation in Chicago about where young people should be, and around public safety. And I think that nature should be in that equation.

Nature is a place where so many people find refuge, where they find relaxation, where they can experience centering. There’s more room for that, like community gardens where young people can help plant green infrastructure in their communities. If we want to actually create impact in communities, and we want to broaden the awareness of what the Metropolitan Water Reclamation does, then we need to do innovative things that actually tangibly affect people’s lives. That’s work that I’m interested in doing.

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Junaid Ahmed, a 45-year-old Indian American candidate for Illinois’s Eighth Congressional District, is posing a stiff primary challenge to incumbent Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat who has held the seat for five years. This is Ahmed’s first electoral run.

Ahmed was born in Hyderabad, India, and his family moved to the U.S. when he was still a child, about 30 years ago. He has since lived in Chicago, spending most of his foundational years in Rogers Park. A few years ago, Ahmed moved to the Eighth District, where he lives with his wife and four children.

In an interview with the Reader, Ahmed shared vivid details about his first few years in America and talked about his working-class upbringing.

“My childhood has been quite, quite interesting. As a new kid on the block my dad used to have two jobs, sometimes a third job; same job, two shifts,” he said, recounting his early years in Chicago. “Growing up you either became a doctor, or an engineer, otherwise you’re no good,” he said, lightheartedly emphasizing all the American dreams his parents had for him. In 2000, Ahmed got a degree in computer science from DePaul University, and from there went to corporate America to work at Accenture for seven years. In 2009, Ahmed earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, and then started his own technology consulting firm, SAKStech, in 2013.

Ahmed said that “politics was never on the plate for him,” but he was inspired to get into public service by his parents, who always taught him to share and give back to the community.

In 2015, Ahmed volunteered for Krishnamoorthi’s first campaign for Congress.

“To be very honest, I was excited,” he said. “And I was excited to see [Krishnamoorthi]…. And maybe he was a great guy back then, a fellow Brown brother running.”

Since then, Ahmed’s politics have continued to evolve. He is a staunch supporter of raising the minimum wage and enacting Medicare for All. “In the wealthiest nation on the planet, everyone should be able to thrive,” he said.

In 2020, Ahmed was organizing rallies in support of universal healthcare and urging representatives such as Krishnamoorthi to stop taking money from the for-profit healthcare industry when he met Elisa Devlin, now his deputy campaign manager. Devlin said that she was moved by Bernie Sanders’s campaign, and when that ended she wanted to continue being involved in politics. She started an organization called Schaumburg Area Progressives, a platform that she runs to this day. It was during her involvement with SAP that Devlin crossed paths with Ahmed.

“I saw the same qualities [in Ahmed] that really drew me to Bernie. That authenticity,” Devlin said.

According to Ahmed, Devlin had a huge role to play in pushing him to run for office. “Basically Elisa said, ‘Junaid, if you’re not the candidate, we think that there is no candidate in 2022,’” he said.

Both Krishnamoorthi and Ahmed are Indian Americans, but vary starkly in their views of religious politics in India. Ahmed is a practicing Muslim, while Krishnamoorthi identifies as Hindu, and has expressed support for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right- wing paramilitary organization in India.

The RSS is a Hindu nationalist organization that promotes the creation of a homogenous Hindu homeland in India, and espouses the Hindutva ideology—a right-wing ideology that casts out and discriminates against non-Hindus as “foreign.” Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a former member of the RSS, and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, which draws its core political values from RSS, as an RSS organizer in 1985.

Modi was elected prime minister in 2014. During his administration, India has fallen on the religious freedom, press freedom, and hunger index, and has seen a rise in violence against Muslims.

In 2005, the U.S. government revoked Modi’s diplomatic visa for failing to control anti-Muslim riots in 2002 in Gujarat, the Indian state he was head of at the time. In 2014, Modi’s government passed a Citizenship Amendment Act that was widely derided as anti-Muslim, and has passed several other laws since then that have been similarly criticized. In January, Gregory Stanton, the founder and director of Genocide Watch, called the current systemic discrimination of minorities in India as an “impending genocide.”

During the 2019 Howdy Modi event—a grand reception for Modi in Houston—Krishnamoorthi delightedly shared the stage with Modi. He was the only elected Indian American politician who attended the event.

“Unfortunately, Raja chose to look the other way when a call for genocide is happening in India,” Ahmed said. “He chooses to still keep associating with these people who have openly enabled this genocide. He’s not even ashamed of it.”

According to Pieter Friedrich, a freelance journalist who does independent research on Hindutva and its associated links with American politicians, Krishnamoorthi extends his support to right-wing politics in India because of financial interests. Friedrich called Krishnamoorthi “the RSS’s man” in Congress.

In the runup to the 2016 race, Krishnamoorthi’s campaign accrued the highest funds among all House races across America. The Hindu American Political Action Committee (HAPAC) contributed $35,000 to his campaign in 2015.

The HAPAC’s stated mission is to ensure that the religious freedom and human rights of Hindus all over the world are preserved. It is linked to the Hindu American Foundation, which underpins the Modi government’s nationalist, allegedly anti-Muslim agenda.

“Breaking in is getting your foot in the door the first time,” Friedrich said. “That’s always the hardest. That’s the biggest hurdle. And so that initial financing from the earliest days, that’s particularly what [Krishnamoorthi] gained,” Friedrich said.

With more than $9 million in his campaign bank, Krishnamoorthi doesn’t necessarily need the financing, but he does need to avoid alienating his earliest and most influential supporters—the people who were crucial to helping him get into Congress in the first place, Friedrich added.

Ahmed has raised just over $800,000 via a combination of individual and grassroots donations. In a debate last month, Ahmed promised to “never take a dime of corporate money” and vowed to expand campaign finance reform if elected.

Krishnamoorthi’s frequent donors include Bharat Barai, member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, the overseas branch of the VHP India, which in a way is a subset of the RSS. The RSS and VHP are part of the Sangh Parivar, a conglomerate of over a dozen Hindu nationalist organizations. In May, Barai was seen talking about a chapter he wrote about Indo-U.S. relations and Prime Minister Modi’s inspirational guidance to the diaspora in the book Modi @ 20, in which experts recount and praise Modi’s 20 years as an Indian statesman.

In 2018, the World Hindu Congress was held in Chicago. The event was organized by the VHPA. The same year, the CIA labeled the VHP as a “religious militant organization.”

In addition, the VHPA is known to be taking active steps to “saffronize,” that is, “Hinduize” South Asian history. When the VHPA received approximately $171,000 of U.S. federal COVID relief funds, many human rights activists criticized the grant, saying the organization had “Hindu supremacist” sentiments. An Al Jazeera reporter who pursued the story about the disbursement of COVID funds to right-wing Hindu organizations faced a subsequent lawsuit and death threats for his reportage.

The U.S. Department of State’s 2021 Country Reports of Human Rights lists a slew of violent acts committed against Muslims in India—including one by a member of the VHP, who was arrested for making an attempt to lynch a Muslim cattle trader who later died in police custody.

“I think that as far as that issue [fascism in India] goes, having an Indian American Muslim candidate challenge is crucial to exposing those fault lines in [Krishnamoorthi’s] character and in the ethics of his campaigns and and really holding his feet to the fire on this issue,” Friedrich said.

Editor’s note 6/23/2022: An earlier version of this article misstated the amount of COVID relief funds the VHPA received; we regret the error.

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The heated race for Cook County Assessor is a case study on Chicago-style politics. Fritz Kaegi, the reform-minded incumbent who was left with a mess to clean up by his predecessor, is facing a challenge by Kari Steele, a politically connected commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which manages wastewater treatment and floodwater mitigation. (Steele’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.)

The assessor’s job is not one most people dream of, unless you get a kick out of determining the value of close to two million parcels of land in Cook County. Add to that all the repairs needed to fix a broken system left behind by Joe Berrios who hired his relatives to work for the board, accepted excessive donations from property-tax appeals lawyers, and disproportionately taxed homeowners in poor communities over rich and politically connected developers.

That’s the system Kaegi says he inherited back in 2018 after Berrios’s ouster. He sat down with the Reader to talk about what changes he’s made since and to explain why Cook County voters should give him another chance.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Kelly Garcia: What does the Cook County assessor do?

Fritz Kaegi: It provides the way that we’ve split up the bill for the cost of government around here. In Chicago, there’s about somewhere between $7.25 and $7.5 billion of property taxes that have to be collected every year.

We figure out how we split that bill amongst all the people who own property in Cook County. So it’s really an office that’s about equity. How we split that bill is driven by our estimates of the market value of each person’s property. And the key is that the biggest building owners are like the person at a dinner who ordered a 40-ounce steak and a lot of sides, and we compare them with the person who just ordered an appetizer or a side salad. How are you splitting up the bill amongst them?

The key to evaluating how an assessor is doing is making sure that you’re estimating the market value of all of those properties fairly and accurately, without bias or favoritism, so that you’re not moving the burden from one group to another. That’s the most important thing that this office does.

Residents from Pilsen and Little Village often tell me they’re facing a burden of higher property taxes, which is pricing them out of the community. How are you addressing this?

I think the greatest inequity in the system is that under my predecessor and for years before that, big buildings were undervalued, so that people who lived in Pilsen and Little Village were picking up the tab for them.

The gold standard in our industry looked at commercial transactions that happened in 2018, [which was] the year before we came into office. It found countywide that commercial properties were 40 percent undervalued, and in Chicago, it was 50 percent, and that undervaluation got bigger the bigger the building got. So basically, small commercial properties in places like Pilsen and Little Village tended to be valued more closely to the mark, and the biggest properties were hugely undervalued. So those little commercial properties were picking up the tab for the big buildings downtown, just like homeowners were in Pilsen and Little Village.

Now, I think there’s another part that I have less control over that people might want to blame me for, which is when gentrification drives up the values of properties. And eventually the assessment system catches up if we’re doing our job, because you don’t want to systematically undervalue some properties because then you’d be passing on the tab to others, to people who live in neighborhoods where prices have not been going up.

But we’re not an engine of gentrification, we just catch up to the gentrification that’s already happened. What we can do to mitigate that is make sure everyone gets their [property tax] exemption. We’ve really made a big push for seniors who are over 65 whose income is under $65,000 a year. They can get the senior freeze, which basically locks your assessment in place.

The omnibus affordable-housing bill is going into place this year, and it’s going to be incentivizing the renovation and construction of affordable housing that’s tied to people’s incomes, rather than market rents. Because gentrification really puts a lot of pressure on renters.

What have you accomplished in your first term?

Last year was the first time in close to a decade that the average homeowner in Chicago saw their property tax bill fall. Last year it was a 1 percent reduction in homeowners’ share of the burden, and now we’re talking about 9 percent with this reassessment. [Editor’s note: one-third of properties in Cook County have their taxes reassessed each year; in 2021, properties in Chicago were that third.]

We’re also proud of the fact that county-wide, homeowners’ property taxes were up just 1 percent each of the last two years, which really throttled back much greater growth than had been seen over the previous two decades.

In the first year our assessments were sent out, the gold standard in our field found they were within industry standards for accuracy and equity for the first time ever in the history of our office.

We also replaced the 40-year-old computer program that was the backbone to our system. In 2020, we put in place an online appeals system and online exemptions system. In 2021, we replaced the backbone of the system; that has allowed other gains such as automatic renewal of the exemption for seniors.

We are winning awards for this stuff. This office did not win awards before. We won awards from the International Association of Assessing Officers for our public outreach during the pandemic. We won awards from the National Association of Counties for the digital tools that we created.

For the longest time, this office was a source of mistrust and inequality and corruption, because it was used as a platform for favoritism, for nepotism, and for punishments for political enemies. On day one, I put in place an ethics order that forbids conflict of interest and requires extensive disclosures by our employees. It makes me the first assessor in the history of this office not to take donations from property tax appeals lawyers and appraisers who practice before us.

Why are you running for reelection?

The work that we’re doing is going to be keeping more resources in the neighborhoods with average people, and we can continue to make progress on that. Keeping money in the neighborhoods where it never should have been leaving is so important to not only the health of our neighborhoods, but also for people’s livelihoods and for their incomes.

That’s why it’s meaningful, and we cannot go back to the way it was. This [2021] reassessment in Chicago is on track to be keeping more than $600 million a year in our neighborhoods. But that could all be reversed if you bring back favoritism to this office. The enemies of the reforms that I’ve been putting into place are backing my opponent—the club of big-building owners, the tax lawyers, people who worked for Joe Berrios, those folks, they want this office broken again, and we cannot go back to that. There’s too much at stake.

The work that we’ve done has only been made possible by the public mandate. They were the ones who made it possible. That mandate that brought me into this office, and I’ve been carrying forward that message. And that is how we’re bringing about change: we go to every room, we talk to everybody, even the people who might not have been with us to carry this forward, and we’re winning people over. And with the public’s backing, we’ll be able to do that again for four more years.

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Kina Collins grew up on the west side in Austin, and began organizing around gun violence while she was a student at Rufus M. Hitch Elementary and Von Steuben High School. In 2015, she began organizing with the protest movement that coalesced around the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by then-Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. Collins also worked with the Center for American Progress and Physicians for a National Health Program. In 2020, she challenged U.S. representative Danny K. Davis, who has represented the Illinois Seventh District since 1997, and garnered 14 percent of the vote in a four-way race that Davis won handily. Collins is running again, with gun violence prevention, health-care access, and criminal justice reform central to her campaign. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jim Daley: What have you been working on since the 2020 race?

Kina Collins: I became the executive director for one of the largest gun-violence prevention nonprofits in the state. It was formerly known as the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, and is now One Aim Illinois. It has a statewide grassroots coalition, and we were pushing for things like removing firearms from the homes of domestic abusers and the gun dealer certification and licensing program here in Illinois. Because of that work, I was tapped by the Biden-Harris administration to serve as a stakeholder for the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force.

The pandemic exposed a lot of the issues that progressives have been fighting for around wage equity, access to health care, and listening to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. So a lot of my time since the last primary has been doing mutual aid across the district, checking in with folks to see if there’s any way we can plug them into resources.

Why do you think we’re in a new moment for gun-violence survivors and advocates from Chicago to be elected to Congress?

Nationally, Chicago has consistently been used as a political punching bag around this issue, but we’re not talking about the root causes. We deal with everyday gun violence here in the city of Chicago. And the root cause of everyday gun violence is poverty. Until we begin to address structural violence, which includes public school shutdowns, lead in our piping, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, food deserts, and a lack of jobs in these areas, we can’t strike at the heart of the root cause of what we’re experiencing here in Chicago.

I think that it’s time for Chicago’s congressional delegation to push back on conservative talking points that say Chicago is just an epicenter of violence. We don’t have a single gun store or a shooting range in the city. Chicago is not spreading gun violence across the country. However, red states are spreading gun violence to the city of Chicago. Sixty percent of the guns recovered in crimes in Chicago can be linked back to other states, primarily Indiana, Wisconsin, and Mississippi. The other 40 percent of guns can be linked back to gun shops in the suburbs of Illinois.

My stance is very clear: I support the Second Amendment and the right to legally obtain and own guns. However, my job as a gun-violence prevention advocate is to keep guns out of the hands of people who can harm themselves and harm the public. One of the ways that we’ve been able to do that is through red flag laws, and there’s overwhelming public support for universal background checks. So the messaging is the same.

Why are gun violence, access to health care, and criminal justice reform all part of your platform?

We don’t live single-issue lives—a lot of this stuff is interconnected. I think that our district serves as a microcosm of the United States. We have the Gold Coast and we have the west side of Chicago; we have the western suburbs and the south side. When we look at the disparate impacts and outcomes that happen across the district, we have the wealthiest of the wealthy and some of the most working-class communities in our district. All of them are interconnected.

In Chicago, practically all of our mental health services have been eviscerated. When mass shootings happen and the talking point is that the shooter had a mental health issue, I take umbrage with that, because people who suffer from mental illness are stigmatized around the issue of violence, when actually those who suffer from mental illness experience more violence than they commit. And if that is the case, and that’s your talking point, why do we not have universal health care as a preventative measure for that?

The more brushes with the law that you have, the more likely you are to become a homicide victim. In a district where we see places like Austin, and $100 million being spent by our government to incarcerate adults for mostly nonviolent offenses, we know that poverty is a policy choice that’s being made. That $100 million should be invested in true prevention, and that prevention looks like housing, education, and a fortified and strong local economy.

What are some issues that resonate with a wealthy white Gold Coast voter as much as a young Black man in Austin?

From Westchester all the way to West Englewood, everybody is concerned about public safety and crime. They’re concerned about gun violence. And they’re concerned about very urgent crises, like climate change, a livable wage, and student loan debt.

But people want to know, can we elect a representative who is not going to take corporate PAC money from companies like BP, Exxon Mobil, and Amazon, which are not geared towards the upliftment and the betterment of our district? And the answer is yes. We’ve been able to out-fundraise the incumbent without taking a dime of corporate PAC money. And that makes it easy for me to walk into Congress with a clear moral authority to hold major corporations to account.

How is this race different from 2020?

The pandemic changed a lot of things. Last time, I put a very strong focus on Medicare for All and health care, and it just so happened that our primary was the week before the entire globe basically shut down. And after that happened, I heard from constituents from all across the district who said, “Kina, you were talking about this, you were talking about full access to health care,” and how these issues play a role. So I think that the pandemic really validated me and a lot of voters’ eyes.

Also, we’ve been able to consolidate the progressive space here in the district and on the national level. And I think that we really make the case not just to progressives, but to everyday people across this district that failed status-quo leadership and the same things that we’ve been doing are not going to cut it. We have two options: we can vote for the district as it currently stands, or we can fight for the district that we should have. And I think we’re gonna prevail on June 28.

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As NBA teams finalize their boards ahead of Thursday night’s NBA draft, sources have told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that the order of the top three picks is “increasingly firm,” with Auburn’s Jabari Smith Jr. going to the Orlando Magic at No. 1, Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren to the Oklahoma City Thunder at No. 2, and Duke’s Paolo Banchero to the Houston Rockets at No. 3.

The 6-foot-10 Smith worked out with the Magic earlier this month and was the consensus betting favorite to be selected first overall as of Wednesday night. Magic president Jeff Weltman indicated Monday that the organization was still undecided on its plan for the draft, saying “it’s still early in the process.”

Smith admitted he was “nervous” heading into his workout with the Magic but said it was “fun to get out here and push myself and get through it.”

Smith, 19, averaged 16.9 points and 7.4 rebounds in his lone season at Auburn, shooting 43% from the field and 42% from 3-point range. Against teams that were ranked in the Associated Press top 25 when facing Auburn, Smith averaged 20.8 points and 6.4 rebounds.

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The 7-foot Holmgren also met with the Magic last week and praised the franchise, saying the organization is led by “great people.”

This is the fourth time that Orlando will be making the No. 1 pick. The Magic took Shaquille O’Neal with the top selection in 1992. Chris Webber was the No. 1 pick by Orlando in 1993, and he got traded that same night for Penny Hardaway and a package of future picks that were eventually turned into Vince Carter and, later, Mike Miller. And in 2004, the Magic selected Dwight Howard with the first pick.

The No. 1 pick Thursday will join a young core in Orlando that already includes 2017 top pick Markelle Fultz, a pair of top-eight picks from the 2021 draft in Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs, and Cole Anthony — the No. 15 pick in the 2020 draft.

Banchero, who helped lead Duke to the Final Four in coach Mike Krzyzewski’s last season, surged past Smith to emerge Thursday morning as the consensus betting favorite for the No. 1 pick, before sportsbooks removed odds from their boards.

Smith’s odds had improved to -275 as of Wednesday before being passed by Banchero, who was listed by Caesars Sportsbook at -200 to be selected first overall. Smith was the second-favorite at +140 at Caesars, while Holmgren was +1,100 on Thursday, before sportsbooks began taking odds off the board.

“It’s the weirdest draft market I think I’ve ever booked,” Fenstermaker, a veteran Nevada bookmaker, told ESPN’s David Purdum on Wednesday.

Since Sunday afternoon, there had been more bets on Banchero to be the top pick than there had been on any other NBA market offered at Caesars Sportsbook. Online sportsbook PointsBet also reported a surge of betting interest on Banchero to go No. 1.

ESPN’s David Purdum and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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As NBA teams finalize their boards ahead of Thursday night’s NBA draft, sources have told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that the order of the top three picks is “increasingly firm,” with Auburn’s Jabari Smith Jr. going to the Orlando Magic at No. 1, Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren to the Oklahoma City Thunder at No. 2, and Duke’s Paolo Banchero to the Houston Rockets at No. 3.

The 6-foot-10 Smith worked out with the Magic earlier this month and was the consensus betting favorite to be selected first overall as of Wednesday night. Magic president Jeff Weltman indicated Monday that the organization was still undecided on its plan for the draft, saying “it’s still early in the process.”

Smith admitted he was “nervous” heading into his workout with the Magic but said it was “fun to get out here and push myself and get through it.”

Smith, 19, averaged 16.9 points and 7.4 rebounds in his lone season at Auburn, shooting 43% from the field and 42% from 3-point range. Against teams that were ranked in the Associated Press top 25 when facing Auburn, Smith averaged 20.8 points and 6.4 rebounds.

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The 7-foot Holmgren also met with the Magic last week and praised the franchise, saying the organization is led by “great people.”

This is the fourth time that Orlando will be making the No. 1 pick. The Magic took Shaquille O’Neal with the top selection in 1992. Chris Webber was the No. 1 pick by Orlando in 1993, and he got traded that same night for Penny Hardaway and a package of future picks that were eventually turned into Vince Carter and, later, Mike Miller. And in 2004, the Magic selected Dwight Howard with the first pick.

The No. 1 pick Thursday will join a young core in Orlando that already includes 2017 top pick Markelle Fultz, a pair of top-eight picks from the 2021 draft in Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs, and Cole Anthony — the No. 15 pick in the 2020 draft.

Banchero, who helped lead Duke to the Final Four in coach Mike Krzyzewski’s last season, surged past Smith to emerge Thursday morning as the consensus betting favorite for the No. 1 pick, before sportsbooks removed odds from their boards.

Smith’s odds had improved to -275 as of Wednesday before being passed by Banchero, who was listed by Caesars Sportsbook at -200 to be selected first overall. Smith was the second-favorite at +140 at Caesars, while Holmgren was +1,100 on Thursday, before sportsbooks began taking odds off the board.

“It’s the weirdest draft market I think I’ve ever booked,” Fenstermaker, a veteran Nevada bookmaker, told ESPN’s David Purdum on Wednesday.

Since Sunday afternoon, there had been more bets on Banchero to be the top pick than there had been on any other NBA market offered at Caesars Sportsbook. Online sportsbook PointsBet also reported a surge of betting interest on Banchero to go No. 1.

ESPN’s David Purdum and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The Chicago White Sox finally got back to .500 for the first time since May 26th after a thrilling extra-innings victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.

Fast forward to a day later and the White Sox are once again under .500 after the Blue Jays took the series finale.

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HOUSTON — Christian Wood keeps swishing 3-pointers and smiling, the skilled big man showing off his shooting range and seemingly responding whenever the other team gets within striking distance.

It’s June 13, and Game 5 of the NBA Finals tips off in eight hours, but metaphorically, this pickup game takes place as far as possible from the two cities hosting the league’s championship series.

The location: the practice gym inside the Toyota Center, home to the Houston Rockets, the franchise that has won an NBA-worst 37 games over the past two seasons.

Eric Gordon — the lone player remaining on the Rockets’ roster from the time before they launched into a rebuild — is feeding Wood for some of these 3s. The duo has been a staple at weekday morning voluntary workouts, which routinely feature more than half of the Rockets’ roster and some players from their G League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.

These sessions start with shooting and skill work supervised by Rockets coaches, as allowed by league rules, and end with pickup games that staffers are permitted only to watch. As is the case this morning, those runs typically pit the vets versus the kids.

The team getting torched by Wood features a few players fresh off their rookie seasons — Daishen Nix, an undrafted guard who starred for the G League champion Vipers and signed a four-year deal with the Rockets late in the season, and first-round picks Josh Christopher and Usman Garuba.

None of the Rockets’ rookies from last season — a group headlined by No. 2 overall pick Jalen Green and 16th overall pick Alperen Sengun — are old enough to buy a beer. But they all figure prominently in the Rockets’ plans for the immediate future and years to come.

The same can’t be said for the 26-year-old Wood, the Rockets’ leading scorer and rebounder over the past two seasons.

A day after his pickup game display, the Rockets agreed to trade Wood to the Dallas Mavericks for the No. 26 overall pick and a batch of expiring salaries, four players who might not be on the regular-season roster and certainly won’t be in the rotation.

Wood would have actually been a hindrance to Houston’s plan if he played the final season of his three-year, $41 million contract for the Rockets, who will significantly increase Sengun’s playing time in his second season.

Houston also anticipates selecting “one of the three stars” with the No. 3 overall pick in Thursday’s draft (8 p.m. ET, ESPN and the ESPN app), as owner Tilman Fertitta puts it, referring to Auburn’s Jabari Smith, Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren and Duke’s Paolo Banchero, listed in the order of ESPN’s most recent mock draft.

The young get younger, as the Rockets now have three first-round picks in the draft (Nos. 3, 17 and 26), part of a rebuilding plan that requires extreme patience after years of going all-in pursuing a title.

“The priority is development right now, and along with development comes winning habits and doing things the right way,” Rockets coach Stephen Silas says after watching the voluntary workout. “Hopefully, that leads to some wins, but development is the priority.”

Houston has prioritized development so much that it mothballed former All-Star guard John Wall, paying him $44 million not to play last season, clearing the way for then-21-year-old Kevin Porter Jr. to start next to Green. Wall is owed $47 million next season, and he’s expected to get a buyout unless Rockets general manager Rafael Stone can somehow find a trade partner for the 31-year-old guard.

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That’s part of the price the Rockets, with Fertitta’s approval, have been willing to pay for instantly transitioning from Finals contention to full teardown almost two years ago. It’s not a shift the franchise wanted to make after competing for a championship during James Harden‘s eight-year tenure in Houston, and giving up significant assets in attempts to find his superstar partner.

The Rockets desperately tried to extend that era, but once Harden decided it was over, the franchise determined that a long, painful rebuild was the most realistic route for an eventual return to relevancy.

“We’re trying to build a core of individuals who can become the foundation of a really good team,” Stone says, sitting in an office overlooking the practice court the day after returning from Memphis, where he watched Banchero work out and met with the prospect and his representatives before they all met again in Houston.

“What we want is to see improvement, to see improvement, to see improvement. As long as we’re seeing that, we’re pretty happy with the rebuild, and I was definitely happy with last year.

“You don’t want to stunt their growth by trying to steal a win here or there. Philosophically, we’re very cognizant of that. If your goal is to put together a team that’s really growing, it is different than a team that’s going to try to maximize every win.”

THIS SITUATION ISN’T what Fertitta thought he was signing up for when he paid an NBA-record $2.2 billion to buy his hometown franchise in September 2017, when the Rockets were riding high.

Chris Paul had just pushed his way to Houston via a sign-and-trade with the LA Clippers. The hope was that Paul’s arrival finally provided Harden the sidekick he needed to lead the Rockets to a title.

They came close — “a hamstring away,” a lot of people in Houston will always believe, in reference to the injury that sidelined Paul for the final two games of the 2018 Western Conference finals against the Golden State Warriors — before it all crumbled.

After Harden and Paul butted heads throughout the next season, the Rockets shipped the latter and a package of first-round picks to Oklahoma City in a desperation trade for Russell Westbrook. That star partnership fizzled after one season, and a mass exodus followed, including the departures of coach Mike D’Antoni and general manager Daryl Morey before trade demands from Westbrook and Harden.

The Rockets are banking on steady progress from 2021 No. 2 pick Jalen Green and the rest of the franchise’s promising young players. Barry Gossage/NBAE via Getty Images

At that point, the front office made the collective, clear-headed decision to fully commit to a rebuild rather than attempt to continue to field a competitive team. The Rockets decided it was better to become bad than boring.

“It’s very painful, but I know we’re doing it the right way,” Fertitta says over the phone while peering at the Tower Bridge in London from his yacht on a family vacation. “The future is exciting.”

“The NBA punishes the middle,” says Stone, a longtime front-office employee promoted to GM after Morey’s exit. “That’s just the way the system is set up.”

Houston received one rotation player in the 2021 deal that delivered Harden to the Brooklyn Nets — Victor Oladipo — taking a swing at the upside of a former All-Star guard coming back from a ruptured quad in the final season of his contract. (The Rockets’ roster has nothing to show now for Oladipo, who was sent to the Miami Heat before the 2022 trade deadline.)

The Rockets could have taken center Jarrett Allen in the deal, but they opted to add another first-round pick by rerouting him to the Cleveland Cavaliers, where Allen became an All-Star last season. Houston also could have had wing Caris LeVert but preferred the higher upside and shorter contract of Oladipo.

Another option: Houston could have sent Harden to the Philadelphia 76ers — where he ended up 13 months later after forcing another trade — for a package that was light on draft picks and headlined by former All-NBA guard Ben Simmons. After months of due diligence, the Rockets had determined Simmons wasn’t suited to be the centerpiece of a contending team despite his talent and pedigree.

Patrick Fertitta, Tilman’s son who is heavily involved in the Rockets’ day-to-day operations, credits Stone and assistant general manager Eli Witus for “making the hard and, at the time, very unpopular decision” to prioritize draft capital in the Harden trade. And they all praise Silas for handling the pivot to a rebuild so professionally, considering how much his job changed in the months after Houston hired him to replace D’Antoni.

It might have been unpopular, but Stone insists the decision wasn’t difficult.

“There wasn’t an equally attractive alternative at the time. Not even close from our perspective,” Stone says. “I am a big believer in going all-in. Whether it is to go all-in to rebuild or all-in to win a championship.”

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Houston received a haul of first-rounders in the deal: the Nets’ picks in 2022, 2024 and 2026, a 2022 pick from the Milwaukee Bucks via Cleveland (that was later bumped back to 2023 in the separate P.J. Tucker trade) and four years of swap rights with the Nets. (The swap rights in 2021 did not convey.)

The Rockets anticipated that the super team the Nets formed with Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Harden wouldn’t have a long shelf life, boosting the value of Brooklyn’s future picks. It was a bonus that this season was so bumpy in Brooklyn, giving the Rockets the No. 17 pick in this draft instead of the expected late first-rounder.

The Rockets’ decision-makers were also betting on the benefits of hitting rock bottom.

“If you look back at what we would have gotten versus the draft capital that we got, I couldn’t be happier with the decision,” Tilman Fertitta says.

The Rockets needed high-end talent to return to relevancy. That meant a lot of losing. They landed Green with the No. 2 overall pick in last year’s draft, sweating out what were essentially coin-flip odds in the lottery because the Thunder owned the rights to swap that pick with Miami’s if Houston didn’t land in the top four. (Still owed to OKC, a franchise in a similar rebuild with an even larger stockpile of first-rounders, from the disastrous Westbrook deal: top-four-protected picks in 2024 and 2026.) And Houston hopes to add another young franchise cornerstone with the No. 3 pick.

Stone selected Green over the safer pick of Evan Mobley due to the belief that Green had a higher ceiling. That’s a general draft philosophy of the Rockets’ rebuild: Take big swings and hope to hit home runs.

“We made the decision from an ownership standpoint that our goal was to win a championship,” says Patrick Fertitta, seated next to his father on the yacht, enjoying the last days of a brief vacation before returning to Houston for the final week of draft preparation. “In order to win a championship, you have to take material sacrifice and pain. …

“We made a decision to go forward with that. It hasn’t been easy at times, but we’re committed to it, and we are aligned from ownership to the front office and on down the line to doing what it takes to give ourselves the highest probability of eventually winning a title.

“That’s the path we’ve chosen, and we’re sticking to it.”

IT WOULD BE frowned upon for anyone in the front office to admit it, but the Rockets couldn’t have scripted the final two weeks of the 2021-22 season much better.

Green, the rookie who got off to a rough start, finished with a spectacular run, scoring at least 30 points in six of the last seven games, including 41 in the season finale. Porter, the talented, young reclamation project in his first full season as a point guard, averaged an efficient 28.7 points and 7.4 assists during the stretch.

Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta is preaching patience as the Rockets rebuild: “It’s very painful, but I know we’re doing it the right way. The future is exciting.” Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via AP

And the Rockets lost all seven games, most of which were competitive in the final minutes, learning lessons while sealing the best possible lottery odds.

“You’ve got to take some L’s to get to where you want to be,” Green says on his first day back from a brief Mexican beach vacation, the first break he has taken from the voluntary offseason workouts.

“It’s going to take time, a lot of hard work and dedication to get to where we want to get to. I would say it’s coming sooner than later, just because I’m in the gym with everybody every day. I just feel like we’re coming in here with a different vibe and mentality.”

The Rockets’ confidence in Green as a foundation piece never wavered, even after he was one of the NBA’s least efficient players in the first month of his career before missing multiple weeks because of a strained hamstring. They “threw him in the deep end,” as Stone says, and were encouraged by how Green responded.

“He had struggles, and then you really find out about the character of a guy when they struggle,” Silas says. “What are they going to do? Are they going to pout? Are they going to shut themselves off and shut themselves down and not listen, not try? Or are they going to do what he did, which is just work through it and listen all the way through it and watch film and become laser focused on improvement?”

Every future scenario the Rockets’ brass considers features a starring role for Green, whose primary offseason focus is adding strength to his 186-pound frame.

They see Sengun, who is bouncing between Houston and his commitments to the Turkish national team this summer, as a key contributor.

They believe they have a handful of quality complementary pieces with room to grow, including Jae’Sean Tate and Garrison Mathews, mid-20s role players the Rockets found on the fringes over the past two years who were locked into team-friendly deals.

How, or whether, Porter fits isn’t as clear.

Thursday, July 7
Rockets vs Magic, 10 p.m.
Blazers vs Pistons, 12 a.m.

Friday, July 8
Mavericks vs Bulls, 4 p.m.
Spurs vs Cavaliers, 5 p.m.
Hornets vs Pacers, 6 p.m.
Nets vs Bucks, 7 p.m.
Warriors vs Knicks, 8 p.m.
Nuggets vs Timberwolves, 9 p.m.
Suns vs Lakers, 10 p.m.

*All times Eastern

Porter, 22, who was acquired for essentially nothing (a top-55-protected second-rounder) after he wore out his welcome in Cleveland, is eligible for an extension to his rookie contract this summer. The Rockets could also simply allow Porter to play out the season and become an unrestricted free agent.

There is a line of thought from many around the league, including some prominent agents, that Porter isn’t reliable enough to be a key part of a rebuilding plan. That reputation was reinforced when he angrily left at halftime during Houston’s Jan. 1 home loss to the Denver Nuggets, prompting the team to suspend him for the next game. There are also doubts about whether Porter is capable of being a quality starting point guard or better suited for a sixth-man role.

Stone, in particular, praises Porter for drastically improving as a defender and catch-and-shoot threat, the two areas the Rockets’ staff prioritized for him last summer. (Porter shot 48.2% on catch-and-shoot 3s last season, according to Second Spectrum tracking, the best among 227 players with at least 110 attempts.)

“He is not a finished product,” Stone says. “He just turned 22. He needs to grow and improve, on and off the court, but we are excited about him and his trajectory.”

The future of Gordon, 33, is likely a more pressing immediate issue. He remains a productive shooter who could help a playoff team (41.2% on 3s last season) and solid defender. There is strong confidence within the Houston front office that the Rockets could receive another first-round pick with a Gordon trade.

But the Rockets value Gordon, whom Silas refers to as “a rock” due to his quiet professionalism over the rough past two seasons, as a role model for their young players. Gordon says he’s content with that role depending on “what kind of commitment the Rockets really want to give me.” (Gordon’s $20.9 million salary for the 2023-24 season is guaranteed only if he makes his first All-Star appearance or his team wins the title, and he’s eligible to sign an extension on Sept. 3.)

“It’s a tough situation,” Gordon says. “When you’re doing a rebuild, it’s a long-term type thing. Guys have to know that this is a long-term plan. If it’s a long-term plan for these young guys, then I have to know there’s a long-term plan for me, too. That’s the realness of it.”

The reality is the Rockets won’t measure progress in their rebuilding plan based on the standings again this season.

Tilman Fertitta says there is “no number of wins” he wants to see this season. He cites next summer’s free agency, when Houston is going to have “so much cap space” — the Rockets are projected to have as much as $70 million in the summer of 2023 — is an opportunity for the franchise to make winning a priority again. For now, he just wants to “see improvement and watch these young players play hard.”

It’s a plan the Rockets’ front office has convinced its billionaire boss is the best route back to NBA relevancy.

“I don’t like losing, but we want to get to the right finish line,” Tilman Fertitta says. “We do not want to be in basketball purgatory. It’s a horrible place to be.”

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