Ron Johnson spent 32 years in the military leading people through difficult situations. He quickly found another challenge when he retired from the Army.

Johnson is the NBA's  new senior vice president of referee operations, where the two-star general will oversee a department that has spent the last year dealing with the fallout from the scandal involving Tim Donaghy, who pleaded guilty to betting on games he officiated and later accused some former colleagues of misconduct.

"This is an incredible leadership challenge," Johnson said Wednesday during a phone interview. "Leading soldiers or people, I'm used to my people being dispersed across the country, but there's some intermediate leader there in charge of them. But we've got 60 highly talented people that live all across the United States and there's a different leadership challenge there, so I'm excited about how I'm going to do that."

Johnson has heard from some of the referees, and doesn't believe morale is low among them. But the Donaghy situation has put them in a difficult spot. Already used to dealing with criticisms of their competency, they've also been subjected to speculation about their credibility following the new round of allegations Donaghy charged them with last month.

Johnson knows about that, too. He was deputy commanding general of the  U.S. Army Corps of  Engineers, responsible for overseeing $18 billion of reconstruction in Iraq in 2003-04, and remembers reading some unkind words of the work they did.

"I'm a general. Everyone's got these preconceived notions about what a general is, and I'm just a guy that has some credible experience and been fortunate enough to lead people in war and peace, and peacetime areas and combat zones," Johnson said. "I've learned a lot doing that and I don't think leading people during hard times is foreign to Ron Johnson."

MG(ret.) joined Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. through Xi Xi (www.ques-xixi.org) chapter in Ft. Knox, Kentucky in 1981 and maintains close ties with all of his fraternity brothers.