ATLANTA — Zach LaVine lay on the training table after the game Thursday night, draped in towels and voicing disbelief.

“What the [expletive] just happened?” he said, half frustrated, half trying to lighten the mood. He remembered feeling like a tidal wave was building, and once it hit there was no getting out of its way.

That’s not far off.

LaVine gave the Bulls (13-18) a seemingly insurmountable 17-point lead with a three-pointer at the 6:32 mark of the third quarter, then spent the next 3½ minutes drowning with his teammates as the Hawks tied the game on their way to a 141-133 victory. It was the third straight loss for the Bulls, who had to explain how they surrendered 50 points in the fourth quarter.

“[The Hawks] do a good job causing havoc, but I just felt like we gave the game away,” LaVine said. “They amped up their physicality. I made a bad pass out of a double-team one time, but we couldn’t rebound, we couldn’t score, and it just compounded. When it happens that fast, you just keep looking up, and you’re like, ‘Damn!’ ”

Everyone in the locker room, including coach Billy Donovan, shared that feeling.

“The fouling was a huge issue,” Donovan said. “We got them into the bonus early in the fourth. I think the other issue was the rebounding. And then the other part of it was the physicality, which they played with defensively, and the officials letting that stuff go was obviously a huge discrepancy. We had a hard time playing through it, quite honestly.”

They had a hard time with a lot of what happened in the fourth quarter. The Hawks shots 62.5% from the field (15-for-24), went to the free-throw line 17 times to the Bulls’ zero and outrebounded the Bulls 14-3. They also figured out how to get three-time All-Star Trae Young out from under the Bulls’ thumb after nine straight games of them keeping Young ineffective and frustrated — as evidenced by his scoring average of just over 22 points per game and 37% field-goal shooting in those games.

“The biggest thing with [Young] is he’s such a complete offensive player in the fact that he has a great ability to get everyone else involved, so it’s not even his scoring,” Donovan said. “It’s his ability to assist, throw lobs, generate threes. What all starts with him is how good you can defend him without fouling.”

Jevon Carter came off the bench in the first quarter and cooked for 19 points, including going 6-for-7 from three-point range, but Young entered the fourth qurter just 4-for-12 with 11 points. In the final six minutes, however, Young got going. He finished the quarter with 16 points on 4-for-5 shooting.

As for LaVine, he scored a season-high 37 points but still felt empty.

“That was a game we beat ourselves,” he said. “That sucks because we’re not in position to give games away. To give up 50 points in a quarter is a lot, man. We’re going to have to look at that and figure out what we need to do to weather the storm.

“That just can’t happen. It’s unacceptable.”