Perhaps now we can put to bed the most ludicrous piece of the Damian Lillard trade saga.

In what I can only imagine was a sweaty concrete bunker with a single incandescent bulb dangling from above, the NBA’s feared investigative unit coaxed from Lillard a confession that he would not, in fact, refuse to report for training camp if traded anywhere other than his preferred destination of — let me check my notes — Cleveland.

Oh, wait, sorry. Blame my handwriting.

That’s the Clevelander, a famed hotspot on Miami’s Ocean Drive.

Over the past month, Lillard and his agent Aaron Goodwin have angled to convince you that if he were to be traded to the Cleveland in Ohio, or to Utah, Charlotte or New Orleans, the soon-to-be-ex Trail Blazers star would throw an absolute fit.

Same for Boston, L.A. and any borough of New York City.

It was either South Beach or a seat on the bench.

Not true, says the NBA!

So groundbreaking was this discovery that the league’s top investigator shared it in a memorandum to all 30 teams.

“Goodwin and Lillard affirmed to us that Lillard would fully perform the services called for under his player contract in any trade scenario,” wrote J. Edgar Hooper.

And that is indeed a relief.

It is good to know that Lillard has not, in fact, morphed suddenly from an impossibly relatable star into a cartoon villain version of himself.

As unconvincing acting jobs go, this one was somehow even worse than Lillard’s performance in “Space Jam 2” when he — checking those notes again — morphed suddenly into a cartoon villain version of himself.

Huh.

The notion that Lillard was suddenly going to make a heel-turn and jeopardize the goodwill he’s earned over 11 years as the NBA’s most loyal and likable superstar defied credulity.

Casting Lillard as The Unhappy Star would be like handing Chuck Norris the role of Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing.”

I would my horse had the speed of your roundhouse kick…

Nope, sorry, not buying it.

If Lillard was capable of playing the heavy, he would have flexed those muscles much earlier in his character arc. He would have pushed the Blazers to trade CJ McCollum sooner and exerted more influence on some of the memorably flawed rosters of the past decade. He would have played the do-this-or-I’m-outta-here! card years ago. Instead, he was happy to run it back more often than a Blockbuster VCR.

Hey Siri, set a reminder to update references to the cultural zeitgeist.

He’s just too nice.

It’s possible Lillard would be cranky if he was traded to a team that had no chance of contending in the next couple of seasons. But why would such a team — the Houston Rockets, let’s say — enter the mix in the first place?

That all means Lillard may very well still end up in his favored Miami. I’d even bet on it.

But if he does, it won’t be because of a clumsy attempt at strong-arming the Blazers into it or scaring off the league’s 28 other GMs.

It will, I’m sorry to say, be because for most of the NBA Lillard is just not that appealing of an asset.

Not at 33 with four years remaining on a maximum contract — no matter what kind of season he just had.

This will inevitably be read by some as Lillard slander.

And that’s fine. There needs to be a dose of reality applied to this situation.

Lillard has been a transcendent presence in his 11 years in Portland. He’s not just the team’s all-time leading scorer, he’s also among the city’s all-time leading ambassadors. Dame is like Clyde Drexler on the court and Brian Grant off of it.

He is one of the professional athletes whose jersey I would be most proud to see my kids wear.

Lillard has done enough here that we must always go through required disclaimers of reverence prior to applying a more critical eye. One of the three greatest Blazers ever, if not the greatest. Stuck it out when others would have decamped for a major market like, um, Miami.

But when it comes to Lillard in Portland, you must always kiss the ring.

Wait, what ring?

Shove it, buddy, you’re not allowed to ask that!

Miami has been unmotivated to put forth its best offer for Lillard because it’s not clear what team wants him enough to outbid Pat Riley’s cut-rate offering.

What other teams even make sense for Lillard?

You start crossing off organizations that aren’t close enough to contending, who lack the assets to outbid the Heat, are already financially tapped out or are well-stocked at the position and all roads tend to lead back to the Heat.

It’s like merging onto A1A.

I don’t love it for the Blazers either.

For a player of Lillard’s caliber, for what he means here, you want an overwhelming haul in return.

Miami’s available draft picks are not that. Tyler Herro is redundant on a team with Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe and Anfernee Simons.

But this is about moving forward. And you trade Lillard to change direction, not to simply cash in on his greatness. General manager Joe Cronin should still maximize any deal, including finding a taker for Jusuf Nukic’s cumbersome contract and bleeding all possible draft picks out of it.

But what the Blazers are getting out of a Lillard trade isn’t just assets in return. It’s the runway to empower Sharpe and Henderson.

There’s little chance Cronin is limiting his options to Miami. The marketplace is just doing it for him.

You can bet Cronin would love to receive overtures from asset-rich teams like Brooklyn, Utah and New Orleans. He seems willing to take the risk of letting this linger into the season, when most players will be tradable by December.

The fact that those calls don’t seem to be coming now, however, really has little to do with the specificity of Lillard’s request. Or how aggressively his agent has suggested Lillard would become easily disgruntled.

Nobody was ever buying that nonsense.

We know Dame too well.