The reality of the end was already starting to sink in, and you could see as much on the coach’s face. This was a Thursday night in late spring two years ago, June 3, and the Knicks had gone down meekly and weakly to the Hawks for the third time in a row, this time at Madison Square Garden, and that was that. That was the season.

“Trial and error,” Tom Thibodeau said that night, “is a big part of the learning.”

Across the next few days, we will see about that with the Knicks. They are a better team right now than the one that trundled off the Garden floor that night in 2021, 103-89 losers, Trae Young getting the last laugh after three games’ worth of driving through the Garden car wash, slapped by all manner of invective and abuse, and sprinting out the other side.

They are better, they are deeper, they have a point guard in whom the entire team believes, they have spark plugs up and down the roster who electrify the home folks. They have Julius Randle playing far better, so far, in this series than he did against Atlanta. And as in that series, they split the first two games of the postseason.

Back then, though, it was a home split. It meant having to go to Atlanta and try to steal one back, but State Farm Arena was ready for the Knicks, and so were the Hawks, so the Knicks weren’t going to steal home court back. The longer that series wore on, the less the Knicks believed in themselves. Game 5 was little more than a formality.

That was the trial.

These next two games, Sunday and Tuesday, will be the chance to prove they learned from the error of their ways in that series. Interestingly, what they need to do that would be most beneficial is to follow to the letter exactly what the Hawks did that time around:

It was quite a blueprint. And, for good measure, the Hawks were able to build off that early speed, upset the Sixers in the next round of the playoffs and pushed the eventual-champion Bucks to a sixth game in the Eastern Conference finals.

But it all started for the Hawks — as it must with the Knicks — by taking care of essential business at home.

“At the end of the day, we came here and did what we’re supposed to do,” Randle said. “We got one on the road. In the big picture of things, we have to be positive about that. But obviously got to play a lot better next game.”

And that’s the key point. Look, winning one game on the road promises nothing. In what turned out to be the high-water mark of the golden era of Knicks-Bulls, the Knicks’ best shot at taking out Michael Jordan was 1992, when they stole Game 1 of the East semis, came close to duplicating that in Game 2, but then set themselves back by losing Game 3 back at MSG. Getting one road win when you need it is tough enough. Sometimes you never get No. 2.

Beyond that, there’s this: The Knicks were brutal Tuesday night. Brutal play is almost never rewarded in the playoffs, and it’s certainly not allowed when you’re the team punching up. And what was true at the start of the series is still true: The Knicks are the second-best team in this series — by record, by roster, by reputation. Never meant they couldn’t win it.

But it does mean they require more performances like the one they posted in Game 1 than the one they slept through in Game 2. There are a lot of key players here who saw up close what needs to be done two years ago. That was the trial. Now is the time to prove they’ve learned from the error.