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Originally Posted by SMEngmann
To sum up, and I know a lot of people will disagree, the emphasis should not be the number of off ball calls or violations, but the quality of those calls, especially considering the context of the game. Too many people wrongly justify weak calls by claiming to "preserve the integrity of the game." Hogwash, consider the context of the game and the spirit and intent of the rules and call the obvious, it leads to a better game and less trouble.
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First off, let me say that in principle I agree with the gist of your post...my one disagreement however is that the fouls off-ball must be "obvious" in order to call them. Obvious to whom? There are any number of things which will not be seen by the coach/fans, but absolutely have to be called in order to protect the game and the players and to keep things from getting out of hand. Example - HS summer league Varsity Boys last Saturday - forward for white team being blocked out quite nicely by forward from red team decides to pinch red forward in the side of the stomache...I can pretty much guarantee you that I was the only one who saw it, called it, and when the coach does the "What did he do?" routine, told him exactly what happened and he sat the kid down. That was not "obvious" but it definitely had to be called...so I think we need to be careful about the phrase "call the obvious fouls" to the exclusion of all other fouls...