NBA Website Takes On New Look After Lockout Deadline

The NBA lockout is on and as the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Friday, NBA.com immediately changed. Gone were the images of players and the wire-frame we were accustomed to on the NBA's flagship website. Instead, the site was completely stripped of just about everything, replaced by a statement from David Stern and a whole lot of WNBA. While the lockout is in-place, the league and players will stay at arms length, only meeting at the bargaining table, with contact elsewhere prohibited.

After the jump, a comparison of old and new.

First, an old version of the website, pulled from a cache.

Now, the new-look NBA website.

The NBA is dead serious about this lockout thing, it seems. Across the board, all NBA properties on the web are stripping anything that has to do with the players. Team websites will essentially become Geocities sites. It's impossible to function as a team website without being able to mention, you know, the team.

The same thing goes for the main hub, NBA.com. For now, all the content containing anything to do with the players will be filed away, placed on a shelf until whenever the lockout ends. Don't expect much to come from the NBA properties on the web until whenever this whole deal is resolved, which could be a while at this point.

As Tom Ziller mentioned on Twitter, the landing page is merely a facade right now. You can still access the old NBA website by going directly to the old links, such as http://www.nba.com/news.