We’re long past the so-close conversations about these games. We’re beyond the normal breakdown of what caused the loss, of noting the missed shot or the missed assignment or the turnover that ultimately did them in.

This is history. Unfortunately for the Detroit Pistons, history of the worst kind.

They became a national story Tuesday night at Little Caesars Arena for all the wrong reasons. Actually, they’ve been a national story for the last couple of weeks, as the possibility of NBA infamy crept closer.

Against the Brooklyn Nets, before a mostly full arena, and a crowd that cheered as if they were watching a playoff game, the Pistons finally made history, and now own the record for consecutive, in-season losses at 27.

By the end of the game — a spirited contest in which the team’s best player, Cade Cunningham, played the best game of his career; he scored 41 — the crowd was booing and chanting “sell the team.” Still, that the fans waited until the very end reminds us what kind of basketball town this is, and how much this region loves this team.

That’s the shame of this season of shame. And while some of the fans came to rubberneck, so many more came to support this franchise when it doesn’t deserve the support. But then that’s the nature of fandom, right?

That’s also the nature of this region. They show up and have for decades.

It may seem unbelievable that the Pistons keep drawing fans — they are in the middle of the pack despite the worst record in the league — but then this is a region that kept coming to see the Lions, losing season after losing season, even when they became the first team to go 0-16.

This is what we do, for better and for worse. This is who we are. All you had to do was listen to the roar when Cunningham sank a 3-pointer to give the Pistons a five-point lead with eight minutes to go in the fourth Tuesday night against the Nets.

All you had to do was listen to the disappointment when the Nets went on a 16-3 run to essentially win the game, 118-112. Before that deflating run, though, Little Caesars Arena sounded like the Palace days. The salad days, as they were. The days when this franchise ran roughshod over the NBA.

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The current Pistons did their best to honor that spirit Tuesday night by truly competing. The fans couldn’t help but love them for it. And while so many are clamoring for change — a general manager firing, a coach firing — they got lost in the moment before them.

And that’s all it really takes.

That’s all it’s ever taken, truthfully. No fan base expects a title run every year. Fan bases just want competency. They want hope. They got a bit of it when Cunningham took over in the second half and showed the promise of his draft pedigree.

Sometimes, that’s enough. And in a normal season for a rebuilding team, his performance might’ve led to some giddiness.

Yet we’re far past that, too. Losing clouds the view. Historic losing obliterates it.

Twenty-seven in a row? It’s hard to fathom.

Hard, too, to think about taking the court under all that negative weight. So, when the Pistons did, and then raced out to an early, 14-point lead, throwing themselves all over the court, they made it hard for the fans to jeer, or derisively chant.

In the end, as always, it wasn’t enough, and the frustration of this basketball-mad town was too much to tamp down. The fans turned their ire toward the owner, let Tom Gores have it by chanting, no, pleading, no, demanding for him to sell the team.

Gores was asked about those chants last week, and about the fans desire for him to sell the team, to which he responded:

“They can say what they want, but that’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. Other than winning, and we should win more games, we do everything to bring the best to Detroit. Sell the team? They don’t understand what we’re doing in the community.”

Gores has it backwards here. Of course, they understand. He doesn’t understand that they understand ... and don’t care. Not unless he wins.

In the meantime, the fans want change. They know, as he should (and he said he did when he talked with reporters last week), it’s the only way forward. And if he isn’t willing to change anything immediately, the fans need to know he’ll change things this summer.

For now, they’d be grateful for games that weren’t so tied to history, when their team wasn’t pitied, and the subject of headlines for ineptitude. They’d crave to do some simple, old-fashioned handwringing, like when Alec Burks took a contested 3-pointer out of timeout with 34 seconds left and the game still in the balance when Cunningham had been on a heater.

They’d love to forget about historic losing streaks and focus everything on second-guessing rotations, like why Kevin Knox replaced Bojan Bogdanovic down the stretch of a tight game. Or why Monty Williams didn’t use a timeout when Cunningham scored his 38th and 39th points to get Ausar Thompson in the game for defense.

There were 57 seconds left. The Pistons trailed the Nets by two. And, at that point, the best hope to get a stop was to get roster’s best stopper on the court.

Instead, he sat, and the Nets worked the floor until Dorian Finney-Smith slipped to the corner, uncovered, and hit a dagger 3. Maybe Thompson doesn’t make a difference.

But why not try?

Unfortunately, as long as this streak goes on, those are conversations for another day, I suppose, maybe even for another year, when the Pistons haven’t set the all-time NBA record for in-season wretchedness.

And while there is temptation to quibble with Williams' in-game decisions, and while he's had a hand in this ignoble history, Gores and Troy Weaver are its principal stewards. The head coach is new to this franchise, and, as Gores recently said, he isn’t interested in laying this historic debacle at the feet of his $78-million-dollar coach.

“It can’t be Monty,” Gores told reporters last week on a conference call. “Monty’s been here 20-something games. You can say, 'Hey, maybe he could’ve done this rotation, that rotation,' it gets you a few more wins. And Monty judges himself every single day. It just wouldn’t be right."

Wouldn’t be right? Or wouldn’t be smart? There’s a difference.

For while it may not be fair to remove a coach so soon, Gores said it himself: rotations matter -- in fact, he said he was discussing them with Williams. Offensive sets matter, too. So does defensive focus, and defensive scheme, and the ability to keep a team from hanging its collective head after giving up a few buckets in a row; we’ve seen the Pistons do that too many times, and it’s worth questioning why that keeps happening.

Williams talked about mental fragility with this group a month ago. He took the blame for it. And though the youth on the roster explains part of it, it can’t explain all of it. Williams hasn’t been able to figure out this team.

Then again, Weaver hasn’t been able to figure out this roster. And Gores hasn’t been able to figure out his front office, and round it goes.

Right now, the Pistons have Cunningham, and he looks more promising by the week lately. They’ve also got Jalen Duren, who made his return Tuesday night after missing more time because of an injured ankle.

He’s worth keeping, too.

Thompson shows potential. But that’s three players out of 15, and nowhere near enough. No wonder the margin is so thin and getting thinner with each loss. The weight of ignominy is heavy like that.

It does strange things, like make an 11-year vet commit a high-school level sin with the game on the line, which is what Bogdanovic did when he left Cam Johnson (remember him?) in the corner to help cover a shooter (Spencer Dinwiddie) who had barely made a shot all night.

Middle schoolers know you don’t leave shooters in the corner. Naturally, Johnson hit the 3. It wasn’t quite the dagger, but it was close, and it was a reminder of the consequences of trying to get out from under the wrong kind of history.

As Cunningham said, that history “weighs on us every day ... everywhere.” And is likely to keep weighing on them for the foreseeable future.

Sell the team? That's not happening. But Gores has got to back up his recent promise of change — and soon.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Pistons have made ugly history. It can still get much worse.