‘Our goals are bigger right now.”MARCUS CAMBY

ATLANTA – At first, the Knicks were just enjoying the playoff ride. Now, they’re looking for much bigger success, as Marcus Camby pointed out last night.

“There was a time when we thought we weren’t going to make the playoffs, but everyone stuck around each other, circled the wagons and started gaining trust in each other. Now we’re going out there just having fun,” Camby saidbefore the Knicks took on the Hawks in Game 2 at the Georgia Dome. The Knicks won the opener, 100-92, Tuesday night.

Camby said vast improvements have been made because the Knicks are getting their running game going.

“We’re definitely a better team,” he said of the change over the last few weeks. “We’re getting our on transition more. I think that’s a big part of our success, getting out and getting some easy buckets, we’re having fun and that makes the game easy.”

Now the Knicks are gaining confidence every day. It’s no longer an attitude that they are just happy to make the playoffs. Now they want to make it happen.

“Our goals are bigger right now,” Camby said. “We figure that we can move on and keep marching on to a championship. You know it takes one game at a time and takes a lot of hard work and dedication.”

The Knicks have much work to be done, just to make it interesting. A loss last night would have given the Hawks hope. One of the Knicks’ biggest problems this season is lack of a killer instinct. They get a team down and can’t put them away. Remember Game 4 against the Heat at the Garden?

With Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell motoring along, the Knicks no longer are same old slow down Patrick Ewing Knicks. Houston and Sprewell combined for 65 points in the Game One victory. Said Jeff Van Gundy of Allan Houston’s development: “To be a great player in the league you have to have the right amount of coachability and stubbornness. Smetimes I think he’s a little too open to too many people to what they have to say.”

When someone mentioned that is perhaps the result of being a coach’s s son, Van Gundy said, “Most coach’s sons I know are [jerks]. You know, they think they know more than do. He doesn’t act like any of the fraternity of coaches’ sons that I know of, at least, who think they’ve got it all figured out.”

Van Gundy added, “Allan never ever looks to blame others when he struggles. It’s never like he’s pointing fingers at time, touches. He never blames. I think that’s been the greatest thing. Everybody in New York gave him the opportunity to blame from the first day he was here: ‘Is it Starks being here? Is it Ewing? Is it Larry? Is it Sprewell?’ You know, whatever. He never took the bait. To me, that was the reason he was able to get better.”

Van Gundy seemed in a better mood yesterday about the team’s mood. He was greatly concerned the Knicks were not in the right frame of mind in the Game One shootaround.

“After a loss, I think you’ll see [more of] a difference in Atlanta than us. It shouldn’t be that way, but it usually is with the team that came off the win. We have to feel just as desperate as they do to win.

“I don’t think strategy is ever the biggest adjustment,” Van Gundy continued. “I think the biggest adjustment you see from game to game in the playoffs is level of intensity created by the previous loss. That’s what we have to be ready for. An intensity on defense, an intensity on the boards, a more forceful offense, driving the ball to the basket to them. We’ve got to do the same thing. We can’t just match it, we have to exceed it.”

“I’d venture they’re going to be a little more physical,” Sprewell said of the Hawks, “but I’m not really worried about what they are going to try to do as much as what we have to do.”

“I can’t expect that we are both going to go out and hit 30 tonight,” Sprewell said. “I’m sure they are going to make some adjustments. It’s something we are going to have to get a feel for as the game goes along.

“We want to do the same things offensively, try and attack get into the paint, but defensively we have to pick it up. We have to do a better job of stopping them in transition”