After Brooklyn (15-15) breezed past Detroit (2-28), 126-115, Saturday at Barclays Center, Johnson, who played for Pistons coach Monty Williams in Phoenix, encouraged his opponents to keep a stiff upper lip following their 26th straight defeat.

“I told them, some of the young guys on (their) team after the game, that sometimes you got to lose before you can win,” Johnson revealed.

He nearly ate his own words.

After knocking down a free throw with 2:36 remaining in regulation to give the Nets a 109-103 lead, Johnson watched Cade Cunningham make three straight driving layups around his own 3-pointer to cut the deficit to two with 57.2 ticks left.

Johnson answered by feeding Dorian Finney-Smith for a 22-footer that gave Brooklyn a 115-110 cushion with 38 seconds to go.

“We had a little bit of execution and composure down the stretch,” Johnson said after finishing 9-of-13 from the field, including 4-of-6 from 3-point range. “It didn’t always go our way, but we were able to pull it out.”

By doing so, the Nets won their second straight following a season-high five-game slide and put the Pistons atop the list for the most consecutive losses in a single season in NBA history.

Only the 2011-12 Cleveland Cavaliers and 2013-14 Philadelphia 76ers had lost as many as 26 straight games in a single campaign.

Now, Detroit will head to Boston Thursday night trying to avoid the longest skid in the history of the league over two seasons. The Sixers dropped 28 in a row spanning the 2014-15 and 2015-16 campaigns.

“You have to be real about where we are,” said Williams, who is in his first year at the helm in Detroit after spending the previous four seasons with the Suns. 

“Nobody wants something like this attached to them, and the bottom line is it is my job,” he ceded. “Coaches are graded on their records.”

Cunningham certainly didn’t let the Pistons go into NBA infamy without a fight. 

The former No. 1 overall pick scored all but four of his game-high 41 points in the second half and knocked down 15-of-21 shots, including three treys, and 8-of-10 free throws.

“A lot of this load is trusted to me, on the court and in the locker room,” Cunningham told the Associated Press. “Every day, I try to lead the squad, and I haven’t been successful at that — 2-28. It’s only right that I speak for it and be the face of it.”

The Nets were almost faced with the shame of explaining how they failed to complete this home-and-home sweep.

Detroit outscored Brooklyn in the first and third quarters and led 97-92 on Cunningham’s 3-pointer with 8:10 left in the fourth.

But the Nets responded with a 13-0 burst, capped by Finney-Smith’s 22-footer with 4:53 remaining to open a 12-point lead.

Holding off Cunningham and the Pistons down the stretch assured the Nets their first back-to-back wins since the first week of December, a .500 record and some momentum heading into Wednesday night’s game vs. the Milwaukee Bucks on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush.

“I didn’t sleep very well last night, anticipating how tough this game was going to be,” Nets coach Jacque Vaughn admitted. “Any time you play a team back-to-back like that, it is really tough to (win).”

Cam Thomas scored 17 points and Day’Ron Sharpe and Nic Claxton each added 11 points and 11 rebounds for Brooklyn, which won’t see the Pistons again until visiting Detroit on March 7.

“Is it heavy? Yeah, I would imagine for everybody it is,” Williams said of his team’s historic slide. “Nobody wants this kind of thing attached to them.”

And the Nets didn’t want to be the first team to lose to the Pistons since Oct. 28.

“I feel like everybody tunes in to watch them get a win. And it’s not going to be on us,” Sharpe told the New York Post.

NOTHING BUT NET: Finney-Smith scored 11 points and drilled three of Brooklyn’s nine 3-pointers. … Sharpe has reached double figures in scoring in three straight games for the first time this season. … After hosting the Bucks Wednesday, the Nets will open a four-game road trip in Washington on Friday night. Brooklyn will also visit Oklahoma City on Sunday, New Orleans on Tuesday and Houston on Jan. 3.