It might’ve been the darkest night in the history of the franchise — Malice at the Palace aside. And even that’s debatable.

The Detroit Pistons have founded the NBA’s 27 Club. They dropped their 27th straight game on Tuesday — setting the all-time in-season record — by falling to the Brooklyn Nets at home, 118-112.

“Sell the team” chants rained down upon them, for the second time in a week, as disenchanted fans voiced their displeasure. They’re 2-28 overall this season, on pace to be the worst team the league has ever seen. Since Feb. 11, they’ve dropped an unfathomable 51 of 55 games.

Cade Cunningham made sure there were two stories from the historic night. The first, of course, is the Pistons’ ongoing futility, for which there has been no cure.

The second is that Cunningham, the team’s franchise player as 2021’s first overall pick, is also their lone source of hope in the midst of a season that’s already lost. He reaffirmed that on Tuesday, producing a positive night that, otherwise, was anything but.

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The 22-year-old guard played one of the best games of his young career — 41 points on 71% overall shooting (15-for-21), nine rebounds, five assists and just two turnovers despite entering halftime with just four points while battling foul trouble. He scored 18 in the third quarter and 19 in the fourth, keeping the Pistons afloat as his teammates otherwise struggled.

Cunningham made 13 of his 16 second-half shot attempts and scored Detroit’s last 12 points, including a layup with 57 seconds remaining that cut Brooklyn’s lead to two. The rest of the team shot 7-for-26 (26.9%) in the second half. He was responsible for the loudest cheers of the night, and the sole reason the team had a chance late despite trailing by 11 points early in the third quarter.

After the game, he was Detroit’s representative at the podium. It was his third postgame news conference in eight days as the team approached, and then eclipsed, NBA infamy.

“Everyday, I try to lead the squad,” Cunningham said. "I haven’t been successful with that. Two-and-28. I just felt like it’s only right that I come up and can speak for it, be the face for it. That locker room and everybody in there cares a lot. Everybody’s trying to do everything they can to win games and be successful. I put a lot of that weight on myself, for sure.”

A season after his sophomore campaign ended after 12 games due to shin surgery, Cunningham is reaffirming that he’s a player the Pistons can build around. It’s unclear if he’s a true No. 1 — the best player on a championship team. What is clear is that his recent play reflects a player destined for stardom — one the team will be able to continue leaning on as it navigates a derailed rebuild.

In December, Cunningham is averaging 24.3 points, seven assists, 4.9 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game while shooting 50% overall and hitting 84.7% of his 5.4 free throw attempts per game. He is shooting just 30.9% from 3 in that stretch, but also averaging 2.9 turnovers this month — a significant improvement o the 4.5 he averaged through the first two months of this season.

Cunningham struggled with turnovers so much so in November and December, he’s still second in the NBA with 118 through 30 games. He initially led that category by a wide margin. In December, he has turned the ball over 32 times in 11 games, ranking 10th.

His 41-point outburst Tuesday was preceded by a career night just eight days prior, when he scored 43 points (on 66.7% overall shooting) in Atlanta against the Hawks. The two games are the only two times in his career he’s cracked the 40-point threshold. And they’ve come in a time the Pistons are desperately trying to claw their way to a win.

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After Tuesday’s loss, he said his left leg feels good a year after surgery and he’s starting to feel more like himself. Perhaps it took time for him to ease back into the flow of the season.

He’s been lifting the Pistons off of the court as well.

“He showed me even more in the locker room just now,” Monty Williams said after Tuesday's history defeat. “He talked passionately about the things we need to do, and how everybody has to be in the boat and accountable for where we are. You have to be real about where we are. Nobody wants something like this attached to them. The bottom line is it’s my job, it’s my responsibility. Coaches are graded on their records, that’s the bottom line.

"In relation to Cade, he got in some foul trouble early. I knew he was going to put it on his shoulders to get us back in it in the second half, and he did a wonderful job.”

The Pistons need to deeply evaluate how to make Cunningham’s life easier, and which players in their young core are also long-term solutions to their current struggles. The 6-foot-6 guard clearly struggled with the team’s lack of spacing without Bojan Bogdanovic early in the season. He has had cleaner lanes to the rim since the veteran sharpshooter and secondary offensive option made his season debut on Dec. 2.

It’s no coincidence that his game has taken off since then. Expect the team to look to add more shooting as they approach the Feb. 8 trade deadline.

Detroit’s collapse comes as they approach arguably the most important part of their rebuild — the spending phase. Cunningham will be extension-eligible this offseason. Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren, who returned from an eight-game absence on Tuesday and posted a 12-point, 15-rebound double-double, will be eligible in 2025. Both players have the tools to impact winning, and the front office has another year and a half to see if they can move the needle.

The Pistons have a long list of problems to solve. Cunningham is the least of them.

“Don’t jump off the boat,” Cunningham said he told his teammates in the locker room after the record-setting loss. “We gotta stay together. Right now is the easiest time to stand off and be on your own, but we need to continue to lean on each other and continue to push each other and hold each other accountable more than ever now.”

Contact Omari Sankofa II at osankofa@freepress.com. Follow him @omarisankofa.

Check out "The Pistons Pulse", your go-to weekly Detroit Pistons podcast, co-hosted by Omari available anywhere you listen (Apple, Spotify).

Next up: Celtics

Matchup: Pistons (2-28) at Boston (23-6).

Tipoff: 7:30 p.m. Thursday; TD Garden, Boston.

TV/radio: Bally Sports Detroit; WXYT-FM (97.1).

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Pistons historically bad, but Cade Cunningham is source of joy