The league is probably trying to send a message to the media that they're not going to fall behind the NFL's sudden vigor for cracking down on off-field misconduct with serious suspensions. The double standard of the NBA being a "thug league" while the NFL got off scott-free prevailed for so long in the media that the off-field arrests snowballed to absurd heights--all those Bengals getting arrested, the Vikings' sex cruise, Pacman Jones constantly getting into trouble, etc.--before anyone actually noticed that the NFL had gone far beyond the NBA for off-field player misconduct. Once the backlash kicked in, the new NFL commish sprang into action and got almost entirely positive media coverage for it, so now the NBA must be worried about slipping back a bit to the point where they're the only league that gets tagged with the "thug" label. So they might be issuing these suspensions with one eye carefully monitoring the public perception of how they're handling off-the-court misconduct in general.