The NBA wasted no time locking out the players. They also radically designed their NBA.com website. Apparently, they locked out the fans from that, too.
Gone is a robust site filled with stats and history of the basketball. It has been quickly replaced by a site that doesn't mention a single NBA team or a single NBA player (aside from those who were at the negotiating table earlier on Thursday).
While the lockout comes as no surprise -- a whopping sixty seconds after the current CBA expired -- the sparsity of the league's website does.
All that's left are two stories about the lockout, the "official" release from the NBA and a bunch of small stories about that WNBA thing.
So instead of figuring out how many blocks Atlanta Hawks forward Josh Smith swatted last year or how many points Joe Johnson had, you are stuck with such wonderful quotes like this instead from NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver.
"The expiring collective bargaining agreement created a broken system that produced huge financial losses for our teams," said NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver. "We need a sustainable business model that allows all 30 teams to be able to compete for a championship, fairly compensates our players, and provides teams, if well-managed, with an opportunity to be profitable."
Whatever, Silver.
The good not-so-good news is that you can still no longer backdoor into the full site by doing a Google search for a player name like "Josh Smith NBA." We'll see how long that lasts though. I wouldn't hold my breath that it will. That took the NBA's web folks an hour or two to scrub clean.
Remember folks, there's always that Internet Wayback Machine thingy (archive.org). But I'm sure, the NBA will get to that next, too.
Oh, it's going to be a fun summer alright, if you're a labor lawyer getting rich. The rest of us just get to sit back end watch the drama without enjoying some hoops or remembering the history of the game from NBA.com either. Who won the NBA Finals again?