Standing up for his teammates and being a G are two different things. Don't get me wrong I love Artest, and always root for him, but he wants to fight, it's simple as that, I bet he would do good in the UFC.
But the problem is, right there he was merely standing up for his teammate, none of what happened there looked like he wanted to fight, no raising of his fist nothing. If he really wanted to fight, he would've just knocked Jason Kidd, who was right there, or at least tried to knock Howard from where he was. He came in to get his teammate and stand up for him, he did the same thing in preseason. Ron hasn't had any real incident since that Pacer-Piston brawl and I still blame that shit on the fans more than I do the players, cause personally if you attack me and throw shit at me like that fan did, as a MAN I would go in there myself as well. I mean, what if the dude threw something worse than his beer? Other fans picked up chairs and threw them, others came on the court to put up their fists against the Pacer players.... Unnecessary tanget, I'm stopping there.
His first thought a second after seeing what was happening was to go there and kick some ass, he ran there and then his common sense told him to chill and take the highway. We would see that if we were to explore his brain and his thoughts. (but we can't so I guess you win....for now)
No way did he deserve a T. I mean, you could see he bumped Howard, but that's not a T. He wanted to get Yao out and like guys have said, his reputation gave him that T. But, it's good on Artest to think "Get Yao out" instead of "Put Howard in the the Ground".
They should appeal it. The bump was soft and Artest did the right thing. If Stern lets this T stand, we know it's all on Artest's reputation.
I think that is the underlying reason as to why they are appealing. First reason being cause it really wasn't deserving of a T. The underlying one would be to test Stern to see if this was truly based purely on Ron's reputation, which in my opinion has disappeared for the last 2yrs or so. See if Stern calls it right or not.
Ron didn't deserve that T but the funniest thing is that if you see the post game interview, he was actually more mature about it than half of the people in this thread.
Josh Howard deserved a T for that cheapshot foul. I think the intial reaction of the officials was to T up Ron because he rushed in and went toward Howard. I'm not sure they have the authority to review that call during the game, but I think Artest should win his appeal.
He lost the appeal so the T stands, but the Rockets also sent the tape of Howard tripping Yao, so we are waiting to see if he is getting T'd up for that.
