Things are about to get real for the Portland Trail Blazers.

Maybe you’re thinking that 165 losses in the last three seasons is enough reality for you. Fair enough.

But with the draft just days away and teams already swapping players, your local NBA team is arriving at a significant moment of truth.

Jody Allen won’t want to keep paying into the luxury tax for one of the worst teams in the NBA. And that’s not her being cheap. No NBA owner would tolerate that year after year.

Nor can fans get excited about a team that has too many veterans mucking up the opportunities for the young stars that they’re being asked to invest in.

It’s seen as a foregone conclusion that the Blazers will trade veteran guard Malcolm Brogdon, who was a valuable locker room presence after being traded from the eventual champion Boston Celtics in the Jrue Holiday trade.

But don’t expect general manager Joe Cronin to stop there.

The roster, taken as a whole, is an enigma. Lopsided and weighted at the top with players who are good enough to be playing huge roles but who make little sense for a team building through the draft. And while you can limp along like that for one season, it isn’t a model for growth.

With half the teams in the NBA, if not two-thirds, thinking they should be in the championship mix, the Blazers have an opportunity to capitalize and recoup significant assets not just for Brogdon, but also Jerami Grant and, yes, Anfernee Simons.

Can Cronin gin up a bidding war for those players? If trading the Blazers’ most productive players feels like a step back, well, you’re right. And the franchise has to be mindful of the tightrope it is walking by asking a fanbase accustomed to watching competitive basketball — the Blazers made the playoffs 11 out of 13 seasons before their current three-year drought — to endure more losing.

But I’d argue it is easier to get behind a losing team that you can watch grow from the ground floor than a roster of assorted mercenaries just waiting for their tickets out of town. Fans need to see a clear direction for their team. They need to have an identity to grab hold of and invest in. The Blazers haven’t given them that since they started unsnarling the pieces around Damian Lillard in 2022 and certainly haven’t presented a cohesive vision since saying goodbye to Lillard last summer.

This is the summer to remedy all that.

It’s time to complete the teardown and go all the way in on the youth movement.

The Blazers are fortunate that this should be a relatively easy decision. There are teams, notably Minnesota, who were in the title mix last season who are now having to come to terms with the NBA’s punitive tax structure. The Blazers? They’re still multiple years away from making a postseason push.

Barring any moves, Cronin has four picks to make in a draft that could go any number of directions. His goal should be to find the best player available rather than drafting for fit.

If the Blazers were playing roulette, they would be placing chips across the board with more chances to hit it big. It’s a long game, you see.

One near-certainty is that there are no moves the Blazers can make this summer that vault them into immediate relevance.

I have no illusions of this team being any better than its 21 wins last season, nor should any reasonable fan. The 2025 draft offers too many alluring prospects for the Blazers to do anything but make next season about development ... and racking up losses in the process.

If Portland is truly committed to seeing what they have in Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe and this year’s draft picks — and what other choice do they have? — then there is virtually no argument against the Blazers becoming the biggest sellers in the NBA.

Trade Brogdon, trade Grant and trade Simons. Trade Deandre Ayton if there is a market for him (there likely isn’t, and somebody will need collect stats for the next couple of years). Build a war chest of draft picks and easily moved contracts. Create financial flexibility.

The toughest part to accept of this would likely be the prospect of moving on from Simons. At the end of the regular season, I raised that possibility that it was time for the Blazers to move on from the 24-year-old guard who averaged a career-high 22.6 points per game last season. Healthy, he was the Blazers best player.

And age-wise, he still lines up with the Blazers’ timeline.

But in two years, just as Sharpe and Henderson should be hitting the accelerator in their own careers, Simons will be an unrestricted free agent looking to be paid like his team’s best player.

There is real value in trading him now and clearing the runway.

In two years as the Blazers general manager, Cronin has shown himself to be a conservative operator. There is little wisdom to holding back now. He has players who should be in demand and incentive to get deals done.

The Blazers need to give their fans something to believe in, even if it will take some time.

-- Bill Oram