The streak is dead — Wizards win first game of season. But they made it hard on themselves.

Break up the Wizards.

Okay, maybe we’re not there yet. But Washington’s 12-game losing streak to start the season came to an end at home with an 84-82 win over Portland. They did it with 19 points from Jordan Crawford off the bench, with Trevor Ariza being efficient (14 points on 6-of-9 shooting) and with some good defense.

But this is the Wizards, they couldn’t make it easy on themselves.

Washington led by 15 early in the fourth quarter thanks to a combination of good defense and bad Trail Blazers shooting — from the start of the second until 2 minutes into the fourth quarter the Wizards scored just 35 points on 27.7 percent shooting. Damian Lillard (who finished with 20) was 2-of-12 in that stretch while Wes Mathews was 0-for-6. Portland scored 16 in each of the second and third quarters. Washington didn’t light the world on fire in there, they just sucked less.

But this is the Wizards, there would be no easy win — the Trail Blazers went on a 15-0 run to tie the score at 79-79 with 3:15 left in the game. The Wizards went nearly 7 minutes without scoring. And we had a ballgame.

Portland briefly took the lead when Nicolas Batum drew a foul on Ariza and hit one of his free throws to put Portland up 80-79.

But on the next trip down the court Nene (who still looks rusty but played better minutes than Washington has been getting off the bench) fumbled the ball in the post, got it back and had the presence of mind to kick out to Crawford for a three, and the Wizards were up 82-80. Next trip down, LaMarcus Aldridge tied it with a jumper.

Then Emeka Okafor made the two plays that won the Wizards the game. First he blocked a J.J. Hickson shot inside (after Aldridge passed up a wide-open 10 footer to dump it to Hickson by the rim, at which point Hickson hesitated and allowed Okafor to recover; it was all very Hickson).

Then at the other end Wizards guard A.J. Price drove, drew the defense, dished to Okafor who was fouled on his shot. He sank two free throws and it was 84-82.

Portland had one last chance but Aldridge picked up his dribble under pressure and his release valve ended up becoming a leaning, contested Batum three that airballed, and while Lillard made a crafty play to get the rebound he got caught in the air and passed to himself. And that was pretty much it, despite what could have been a foul on the last inbound on Nene, but at this point the Wizards deserved a break.

This doesn’t solve all of Washington’s problems. Not by a long shot. This is still an offensive team capable of 7-minute dead stretches, they just got away with it for a night.

But it’s a win, and Washington needed one.

As for Portland… was this even their worst loss of the season? They had a very ugly one to Phoenix earlier that wasn’t this close and didn’t have a comeback. It was a worse performance, although to be fair the Suns are a better team.

The fact that we are debating this tells you all you need to know about how Portland’s season is trending.