There wasn’t much to a trip to Sacramento in the late 1980s or early ’90s. Except you’d get to see Mitch Richmond do work.

I can’t say I loved going to Market Square Arena in Indianapolis back in the day too. Except you’d be able to watch Reggie Miller ping-pong his way around the court, like a pinball in your favorite machine, bouncing wildly off the bumpers and racking up points.

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Minneapolis? KG. ‘Nuff said.

A trip to pre-Tim Duncan San Antonio meant heaping helpings of David Robinson, “The Admiral.” Dallas was Ro Blackman’s city. Utah was Stockton-to-Malone.

At just about every NBA outpost, there was a star, and occasionally, a superstar, worth watching.

Now, that was a long time ago, before League Pass and RSNs brought every team and every player to your big screen, iPad or laptop. Times are different now. The NBA is more intimate and accessible to millions.

So you can, with a click, watch every Damian Lillard game with Portland, home and away. And with another click, you can read or hear every machination about Lillard’s future there.

If you’ve done so lately, you may be overwhelmed by the annual back-and-forth soap opera about whether Dame will stick in the Rose City or at long last ask for a trade. And you found out in real time last week that the Blazers didn’t move the No. 3 pick, as Lillard had strongly suggested they do in pursuit of a veteran or veterans to help him make a run in the Western Conference next season.

Not only did Portland keep the pick, but also it took what a logical person would assume is Lillard’s eventual replacement in Scoot Henderson, the talented and precocious 19-year-old from the G League Ignite.

The Blazers and their 32-year-old face of the franchise met Monday. General manager Joe Cronin called it a “great discussion,” reiterating that the Blazers are determined to build a winning team around the seven-time All-Star. Collective eyes rolled in the PDX. Feelings there are rubbed raw, especially for a fan base that’s among the league’s best.

Is it too much for me to hope for a miracle in keeping Dame in Oregon?

Not because of any dislike of the Miami Heat, the Brooklyn Nets or any other team that’s been connected to Lillard in trade talks. Miami is an exemplary franchise, one that more teams should emulate. Brooklyn has one of Lillard’s best NBA buds in Mikal Bridges; Miami has another in Bam Adebayo.

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But what makes the Association such a powerful draw is that you can go to any arena nightly and almost always see someone performing his craft at the highest level. And thus it matters that people in Portland have the same access to greatness that people in L.A. or New York or Miami have.

Henderson certainly projects to be a great player in the NBA, someday, and maybe soon.

Of course, Lillard is already great.

You can argue now that the best move for Portland is to trade Lillard and surround Henderson with as many good players as possible as he begins his career. I can’t and won’t argue the point. I will ask: Would Henderson, Anfernee Simons, Shaedon Sharpe, Nassir Little and, say, Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson and a lot of late future first-round picks from Miami be better? (Some in the league believe that an unleashed Simons — free of Lillard — could do major damage moving forward alongside Henderson.)

But someone needs to back Lillard’s main reasons for wanting to stay and try to win in the 503 and 971.

Someone needs to speak up on behalf of loyalty. Blind, stupid, wonderful loyalty. It’s a trait lost on far too many these days who haven’t earned it, who treat it like a throwaway currency, something to be mocked on social media rather than celebrated.

Yes, Lillard has gotten paid a lot of money over the years, and he’s earned every penny.

Since his rookie season in 2012-13, the Blazers are 14th in the league in victories with 462, per StatMuse. But among teams that have not won a title during that stretch, Portland is … eighth, behind the Clippers, Celtics (remember: since 2012-13), Oklahoma City, Memphis, Utah, Houston and Indiana. He’s been more loyal to Portland than Portland — the team, not the city — deserves. Have Blazers’ fans received their money’s worth over the years watching him? I can’t answer that for them, but I’m guessing which way I think the preponderance of the fan base would lean.

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Lillard’s played through multiple coaches, multiple GMs and personnel people. The only constant in Portland has been ownership, which has remained in the Allen family, with Jody Allen having control of the team since her brother Paul, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire, died of cancer in 2018. But nothing’s gotten all that much better during Lillard’s 11 years there.

LaMarcus Aldridge and CJ McCollum have been the best of the myriad teammates with whom the Blazers have surrounded Lillard. Role players have come and gone, from Al-Farouq Aminu to Evan Turner; Wesley Matthews to Maurice Harkless; Zach Collins to Jusuf Nurkić. None of those players rose to Lillard’s level. McCollum was shipped in a multi-player deal to New Orleans in 2022. Now it’s Simons, Sharpe and Little who Lillard is waiting on to excel.

But Lillard’s never tapped out. He’s danced around the topic more in recent years but has never instructed his camp to leak that he wants out. 

We get Garnett vibes from Dame. Like Lillard, Garnett made just one conference finals with his team, in 2004. Lillard has played all 11 of his seasons in Portland; Garnett played his first 12 years with the Timberwolves before accepting a trade to the Celtics with Ray Allen coming from Seattle, in 2007. And while he hoped and expected Timberwolves management to improve the locker room around him, KG wasn’t going to beg anyone to come play with him in “cold, cold Minnesota,” as he would often put it.

“I’m not a person to fly somebody in here and take ’em to a baseball game, knowing that I haven’t made a Twins game. In the six years I’ve been here, I’ve probably made two Twins games. You know, take you to the park, push you in a swing. That’s not me,” Garnett told me, about midway through his first stint with the Wolves.

But Garnett was pushing that swing way uphill. As in Portland, free agents weren’t swarming to the Twin Cities. The one Wolves team that did make the conference finals did so after then-GM Kevin McHale acquired Sam Cassell from Milwaukee and Latrell Sprewell from the Knicks in 2003 to help get KG close to the summit.

Similarly, Lillard hasn’t convinced anyone of note to come play with him, leaving that up to the front office. Along those lines, Lillard’s made it clear he’d have been satisfied with, say, dangling that No. 3 pick for Draymond Green. But Green’s all but certain to return to the Warriors, and none of the other free-agent forwards bring Green’s I-don’t-need-to-shoot-to-dominate pedigree. (Kyle Kuzma, a very talented player, wouldn’t make the grade. As noted above, the Blazers already have lots of offensive mouths to feed.) So despite the supposed bonhomie of Monday’s meeting, we’re still where we’ve always been with Lillard: He wants better teammates and the Blazers say “trust us.”

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Blazers beat writer Jason Quick wrote a great piece earlier this week detailing how patience could be the key to everyone getting what they want, and there is a parallel to Lillard’s current path in how the Pacers rebuilt their team around Miller during his 18-year career.

The first playoff iteration of the Pacers in the late ’80s centered around Miller and Chuck Person. Gradually, Indy leaned in more on feeding center Rik Smits — who was taken with the No. 2 selection in 1988 — when Indiana got a rare shot at a top-five pick. The Pacers then got tough by adding Dale Davis and Antonio Davis to their frontcourt to surround the 7-foot-4 Smits.

By 1994, the Pacers were in the Eastern Conference finals. But it took more tweaking — bringing back Mark Jackson, adding Jalen Rose and Sam Perkins, hiring Larry Brown and then Larry Bird as head coaches — to get the Pacers back on top.

Eventually, Indy made three straight conference finals between 1998 and 2000, breaking through that third time to make the franchise’s first NBA Finals. But that required inordinate patience from Miller, who never asked out; from a Hall of Fame general manager Donnie Walsh and from ownership, which let Walsh make the moves he wanted.

And now the Blazers’ Cronin says he has moves up his sleeve to improve the roster starting Friday. Portland’s non-Scoot young players do have trade value. Henderson has superstar written all over him. But I have my doubts Cronin can spin those assets into the star who could reset the board in Lillard’s eyes. We’ll know in a week or so.

But it’s not like Dame is going to hold out and decamp for Oakland if the Blazers don’t or can’t make the big move. He’s gonna hoop.

So, is the worst outcome for the 2023-24 season to watch Lillard do work in Portland while teaching the guy who’ll eventually take his key card how to beat a double-team? Teaching him the quickest way through local traffic, the best postgame eatery and how to help make a city love you the way Portland has loved him?

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To show, in word and deed, that loyalty is not a sucker’s oath.

(Photo of Damian Lillard: Sam Forencich / NBAE via Getty Images)