TODAY, IT'S ALL IN BETTER FOCUS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

``People remember what they were doing when (John F.) Kennedy was gunned down. (Magic) Johnson's announcement ... is bound to have the same long-term legacy.''

- The Sporting News, Nov. 18, 1991

``It ... evoked the old Kennedy assassination question: Where were you when you heard the news?''

- Newsweek, Nov. 18, 1991

``Nov. 7, 1991, was one of those seminal Where-were-you-when-you-heard? moments in American culture.''

- Sports Illustrated, Aug. 21, 2001

Where were you then?

A better question is, Where are you today, precisely 10 years after Magic Johnson smiled, leaned into a Forum Club podium and seemed to announce his own death?

Today, which dawns with Magic alive, in fact thriving, is no less astonishing than that day a decade ago.

Where are you now? Where are we all now? In the ways we think about HIV and AIDS, about athletes, about Magic himself, we are in a better place.

And, in no small way, it is Magic who led us here, as surely as he led the Lakers, the hero in the game of his life.

To pinpoint America's progress, think about the journey's beginning.

In 1991, the very concept of AIDS was only as old as Johnson's own case is now. It was in 1981 that the Centers for Disease Control identified the disease that would be labeled, briefly, Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease, or GRID.

In 1991, the celebrity face of AIDS was Rock Hudson, a homosexual man from the wicked world of show business. It was not until the following year that Arthur Ashe's condition would be known, along with the presumption the much-admired tennis champion contracted the virus through a bad-blood transfusion.

In 1991, AIDS had touched sports - leading to the deaths of football's Jerry Smith, baseball's Alan Wiggins, boxing's Esteban DeJesus and NASCAR's Tim Richmond - but the disease and a three-time NBA Most Valuable Player didn't fit together in our then-narrower minds.

In 1991, HIV meant AIDS, and AIDS meant a funeral, or so thought most people listening to Johnson.

The old news clippings appear almost quaint, considering how sophisticated our knowledge has become.

Johnson ``announced he has a virus that could turn into a disease that could eventually kill him,'' the Daily News stated in the first round of reports, jumping through semantic hoops to rid the diagnosis of sensationalism.

``HIV and AIDS are not spread by casual contact such as kissing, hugging, shaking hands or sharing a bathroom ...,'' a medical writer enlisted by The Sporting News explained to its readers, many forced to come to grips with the disease for the first time.

Johnson's fellow NBA stars urged prayer (Larry Bird), expressed fear (Charles Barkley) and suggested the need for mandatory HIV testing for athletes (Kevin Johnson).

Advertising-industry experts speculated that if for no reason other than the stigma attached to the virus, Magic's days as a leading commercial spokesman were numbered.

He was, after all, not exactly an innocent victim. Not Lou Gehrig, living virtuously, unaware that somewhere out there was a disease with his name on it. Magic had, in the common harsh judgment, brought this on himself through a careless social life. Some listeners concluded that Magic was secretly gay and they suspected a lie in his admission to sexual relations with hundreds of women (which sounded to a lot of men less like an admission than a boast).

The Daily News' Lakers beat writer of the time laughed at me when I asked him about the Magic-is-gay rumor.

When you remember where we were then, you appreciate how far we've come.

We understand better now the extent to which HIV and AIDS are and are not the afflictions of homosexual men and drug abusers. We understand that people do live with HIV. We understand that you don't get the virus by brushing up against a sweaty rebounder. We understand the breadth of the American mind.

Those ``Tragic Johnson'' headlines express another time, another place.

Magic, 42, lives. He plays basketball now and then and his teammates and opponents don't worry about commingled sweat. Far from being shunned by the corporate world, he is a colossal success in business and charity work. It is possible to see him at a baseline seat at Staples Center and think of no-look passes and running hook shots, not illness.

Ten years ago, we laughed to ourselves at Magic Johnson's poor choice of words when he announced he had ``attained'' HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Today, ``attained'' seems oddly appropriate, the virus having presented him with a challenge for which he has proven uniquely capable.

Three MVP awards, five NBA championships, one Olympic gold medal, one nation educated.

Not a bad epitaph, especially if it doesn't have to be carved for a long time.