After the Portland Trail Blazers’ 118-116 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night at the Moda Center, Jerami Grant wasn’t ready to claim moral victories.

“You can look at the positives of the game and things like that,” Grant told reporters after the narrow loss. “But this is a game we have to have.”

If anyone was going to take a little victory lap in defeat, it could have been Grant. The 30-year-old veteran brought the Blazers’ offense to life with 22 points in the third quarter. He finished with 32 points on 12-19 shooting and an 8-10 mark from 3-point range. His third-quarter fire sparked a 46-point quarter for the Blazers and helped turn a 10-point halftime deficit into a 105-88 lead with 8:29 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Then it all came crashing down as the game ended with a 30-11 Spurs run. Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs’ 7-foot-3 phenom, was the hero for San Antonio with 28 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. He broke the tie with two free throws with 2.4 seconds left. The disappointing result made Grant and the Blazers’ torrid third quarter an afterthought – at least for Grant.

“I was just trying to win the game,” Grant said of his third-quarter run. “We needed it then. It helped us take the lead and move forward. That’s all I really think about.”

Portland head coach Chauncey Billups took a less black-and-white view in his assessment of the game. Asked if he felt good about his players’ overall performance or if he was frustrated about losing the lead, Billups replied, “All of the above.”

“I was proud of our group,” Billups said. “I thought we played damn hard and there are so many things to learn from in that fourth quarter.”

The Blazers had the Moda Center rocking on Friday when things were going well. Grant’s shooting skills in the third quarter were infectious as Blazers guard Anfernee Simons scored 30 or more goals for the second time this season. Forward Toumani Camara jumped up for three impressive blocks in the second half. 7-foot freshman Donovan Clingan returned from injury and provided excitement and disruption on defense off the bench. Near the peak of the eruption, Deni Avdija looked like a bat from hell as he flew from coast to coast to pack in the cargo. San Antonio then called for time as Avdija angrily moved toward the crowd to emphasize.

After the Blazers scored just 42 points in a somewhat boring first half fell on San Antonio to build that big lead. It seemed like it would be easy to sled to the finish line.

So what went wrong in the last 8:29 minutes?

Billups believed the team had let up after the big lead. He pointed to the Spurs’ defensive pressure and how they won some crucial 50-50 possessions that turned into 3-pointers. He said he called a few timeouts and tried a few substitutes to quell the run, but it didn’t work.

“It just snowballed,” Billups said.

Grant said the team “relaxed a bit” and didn’t show the same aggressiveness on both ends of the floor.

“We didn’t show much composure in the fourth half,” he said. “We kind of deviated from what we were doing to take the lead.”

The collapse led to an unexpected duel at the crucial hour. Billups thought the Blazers performed well for most of the final two minutes, especially after timeouts. Grant came through with a big 3 at the 1:07 mark. Grant then drove in a layup to tie it again with six seconds left.

But Spurs had a timeout and the ball. And they had Wembanyama.

Clingan, Portland’s best rim protector and the only Blazer who could match the extraterrestrial Wemby in size, had already played 15 minutes – the maximum of his minutes limit for his first game back from an MCL sprain.

If the minute limit had been 16 minutes, Clingan “probably” would have been on that final play, according to Billups. Instead, Grant was left on an island against Wembanyama at the high post, and the Spurs star hit two free throws to win the game.

The night should have been a celebration of Grant’s hot shooting or the Blazers’ revival of a major comeback. Instead, the Blazers will have to think about how to turn a comfortable win into their fifth straight loss.

“We have to win these games,” Grant said. “We had the game.”