There are a couple of key pieces that you are missing and that put a different perspective on bank lending.

Firstly, while loans do create reserves in the banking system, those are not simply free money. The purpose of lending money is to get paid back in "real" dollars that only Congress can create/coin. Otherwise, the banks could just loan each other all the money and go away to their private islands, leaving us to twist in the wind.

The base interest rate that has drawn so much attention recently is the cost banks must pay for the reserves that enable interbank transfers of loaned funds. If the borrower and everyone who s/he would distribute the funds to did business with the same bank this would not be an issue, but that is very unlikely in spite of how many toasters banks give away.

This interest rate makes the reserves created by lending an "obligation" to the lender, not an asset. The banks are in the business of judging the ability of its borrowers to repay, and when they get it wrong they are still on the hook for paying back the Fed, or whatever bank loaned them the reserves they needed, with interest. If they get it right they collect the difference between the interest they pay on those reserves and what they charge the borrower, but they must pay back the original reserves in the deal.