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Along with my refereeing I'm also playing in a 4-team Juvenile (16-17 yrs) house league that's just a step above pickup. Our league is not exactly high-priority when it comes to getting refs so usually I'll ref the game I'm not playing in, with a teammate, and the game I play in will be reffed by an older but inexperienced official and another high-school kid that's had a couple years of experience or an experienced ref that's also a coach and the same high-school kid. The first crew usually refrains from blowing the whistle unless there is a painfully obvious foul. The second crew is dominated by the experienced official who will call the game tightly. While the league is not particularly serious the talent level is quite high (most partcipants play high school ball at either varsity or JV level) and the competetive juices get flowing. We can adjust to either style of play with little complaint, the only problems occur when there's a crash under one basket with no call from the young official and then a little bump is penalized at the other end or an obvious travel is ignored at one end and a little pivot foot slide gets called at the other end. Consistency does matter. The game is for the players, they expect and deserve some consistency especially with respect to violations. If you polled 100 players, I would be willing to bet that 95% would care more about consistency and less about the relative tightness or looseness of the calls. That should be the only opinion that matters.
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