The Hawks have a G-League team. Some other teams don’t. The teams with G-League teams got penalized because they can “bring players up”.
It’s stupid for the NBA to penalize teams for investing in their product. You’d think they had the NHL commissioner acting that dumb.
The league's handling of this has been NHL-level stoopid. So you relax restrictions on access, travel, etc. ... but you keep the strict testing and quarantine protocols .... then you restrict teams adding players initially so a bunch of games get postponed ... so you allow teams to sign randos to keep games going .... but you don't mandate that teams have to do it so some fake-try to sign guys to get games postponed anyway ... which, as you say, penalizes teams that try to keep the train/season going ...
Like, what's the plan here? You can't pause the league 'cause ... when TF would you re-start? Pandemic's still going on, to whatever level folks' political beliefs allow them to accept.
Right now, Adam Sliver is that dog sitting in the burning room saying, "this is fine".