ATLANTA — Mikal Bridges is holding back tears. Josh Hart is dejected at his locker. Karl-Anthony Towns’ face is in his hand. And Mike Brown, often notoriously late for pre- and post-game press conferences, is making his rounds early. As he speaks, players are clearing the visitors’ locker room at State Farm Arena. Mitchell Robinson, relegated to a diminished role this season under Brown, walks out of the building. Ariel Hukporti, who hasn’t seen a playoff minute, leaves in a pink hoodie shortly after.

There was nothing to smile about in Atlanta, the scene of the crime for a Knicks team that coughed up home-court advantage in Game 2, then fell into a 1-2 series deficit in its first-round playoff matchup in a crushing 109-108 loss to the Hawks on Thursday.

Now, the Knicks are in the endgame. Their livelihood as they know it is on the line. Because James Dolan — yes, that James Dolan — is expecting his expensive team to make a run to the NBA Finals. And the NBA Finals look like an afterthought for a team struggling to get out of the first round.

Judging by the looks on many faces across the locker room after the game, the players know it, too.

“The reality of it is, and I told them this: it’s a seven-game series for a reason. Stuff’s gonna happen. Plenty of teams have been down 1-2. I even think Oklahoma City was down 1-2 last year, and they end up winning the title,” Brown said after the game. “I’m not saying we’re gonna win it and everything like that, but the reality of it is: it’s seven games, and you take it one game at a time. Each day is its own entity.

“Now, it should sting, because we gave ourselves a chance knowing that we didn’t play our best basketball,” said Brown. “So it should sting, but we need to feel it, get ready to be locked into the next game, which we will.”

* * *

Bridges should be emotional. His Knicks lost by one, and he finished the game with zero points.

Not just zero points but four inexplicable turnovers, the first coming on the game’s opening possession, where he drove to the rim, opted against taking contact, and instead jumped into the air, did a 180-degree turn and vaulted the ball directly to the Hawks.

Atlanta outscored the Knicks by 26 in Bridges’ 21 minutes on the floor. Brown benched him most of the second half in favor of Miles McBride, who scored 15 points on five made 3s in 31 minutes off the bench.

“I had more turnovers [today] than I had the first two games combined. Just sloppy overall,” he said with redness in his eyes, holding back tears. “Just a bad turnover day for me. I’ve just got to clean it up. It’s on me.”

There hasn’t quite been more pressure on a player in orange and blue than Bridges, who may or may not have asked to be traded to the Knicks to play with his Villanova buddies — but certainly didn’t demand the Knicks trade five first-round picks for him in the process.

Bridges deserves all the heat for his performance in Game 3. A player who came up clutch on defense time and time again during the playoffs last season found himself glued to the bench on Thursday because of his offensive decision-making. And the Knicks could have used him in a one-point game down the stretch.

“Yeah, [I wanted to help in crunch time],” he said. “But I’ve just got to be better so I can be out there.”

Maybe Bridges would have scored at least once had the Knicks prioritized getting him in rhythm on the tail end of the regular season. There were no concerted efforts, however, to force feed their star wing in the final two weeks of the 82-game slate. Which is inexcusable, because Bridges — like Towns — is in one of the worst scoring seasons of his NBA career. But the Knicks force-fed Towns over the final month-plus of the regular season.

Bridges was out there getting cardio.

“I’m not concerned about him,” Brown said. “Mikal is a pro. He’s been there; he’s played hundreds of basketball games, so he’ll be fine, but [benching him] is what the game called for, and it’s what I went with.”

* * *

Brunson’s got his shades on. He doesn’t have any answers, at least not yet. He’s been so good, so often in the clutch for his team. This year has been an anomaly.

Or a harsh return to the mean.

Brunson had two opportunities to give the Knicks an advantage in the final minute of regulation on Thursday. On his team’s second-to-last offensive possession, the Knicks’ captain shot an airball. On the final possession, he drove to the rim, where three Hawks collapsed onto him. Stuck under the bucket, he threw a bad pass that got intercepted and lost the Knicks the game.

“We actually got a switch that we [didn’t] think that we’d get in terms of Okongwu on Jalen, and we cleared the side of the floor for him, and that’s what we wanted to do,” he said. “We wanted to zoom into the top of the floor and clear that right side of the floor for him, because that’s what [Jalen is] comfortable doing.”

Last season, Brunson won the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award. This year, he didn’t finish as a top-three finalist.

“I’ve made a lot of plays going right and clearly didn’t [convert] this time,” he said. “It’s a lot of things to go through that — myself — I can be better at. Missed opportunity for sure.”

In New York, everything — from the Knicks’ title odds to their future — revolves around Brunson, whose individual scoring greatness helped lift the franchise to new heights. He has struggled, however, balancing scoring and playmaking, and the indecision appears to have cost him his crunch-time rhythm, which cost the Knicks Game 3 — and maybe much more.

That is a costly development for an undersized player who’s been exposed by CJ McCollum, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and whichever Hawks scoring threat has intentionally sought the mismatch against Brunson this series.

* * *

Brown is still trying to find a combination that can beat the Hawks. On Thursday, he came close: The lineup of Hart, Brunson, McBride, Towns and OG Anunoby outscored the Hawks by 24 points in their 14 minutes played in Game 3. The group boasts a net rating of plus-75 throughout the entire series and plus-32 over 14 minutes logged in the regular season.

“I feel like we were getting stops. Getting some good shots,” said Hart. “OG had a couple big threes at the end of the shot clock. Deuce shot the ball well. But I feel like we really played off of our defense.”

This series is enlightening for Brown, Dolan and the Knicks front office responsible for firing Tom Thibodeau and settling on his replacement. Because Quin Snyder was among the coaches the Knicks, unsuccessfully, touched base with regarding their coaching opening during the offseason.

Snyder is lapping Brown to start the playoffs.

“My job is to keep searching, and that’s what we had to do tonight. We found the right combinations. We got a chance to go up three,” Brown said. “Couldn’t ask for anything better than that with a minute left in the game, a chance to go up by three, especially with the way we played.”

Brown led a huddle late in the fourth quarter that appeared to fall on deaf ears. His lineups have been questionable: He’s confidently played minutes with no Towns or Brunson on the floor (a terrible idea) and has virtually thrown-out the dual big lineups featuring both Towns and Robinson responsible for saving the Knicks season in their Eastern Conference Finals run last year.

Brown was noncommittal on the idea of changing the starting lineup.

“I’m not even thinking about that right now,” he said. “But in the same breath, we have to look at everything.”

He’ll have to change something. The Hawks are rolling. If they beat the Knicks in Game 4 on Saturday, they’ll take a commanding 3-1 series lead. Only 4.4 percent of teams in NBA history to fall into such a playoff hole have come back to win the series.

The Knicks do not look like outliers. Neither does Brown.

“[We need to show] a lot [more fight]. We’re down 2-1,” Hart said at his locker. “Right now there’s no room to feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve got another one on Saturday at 6:00. So it’s a quick turnaround. We’ve got to make sure we regroup and go out focused for Game 4.”

“Of course it hurts when you give yourself a chance to win, last game, this game,” added Towns. “It hurts more that we put ourselves in position to win, but we just didn’t close the show. I think that’s why everyone is emotional. It’s tough, but we’ve got to keep our head up. It’s okay to be disappointed. That means we care. We’ve got to get the next one.”