Chances are, if you care about the NBA's television ratings, you care about what you think those ratings say, and what you think those ratings say is probably wrong, so the entire exercise is a waste of your time.
The NBA is a multi-billion-dollar corporation doing just fine, no matter how much hand-wringing you want to do about social commentary from its players or the absence of big media markets in the conference finals.
It used to be that every so often the subject of ratings would arise when two smaller-market teams met late in the NBA playoffs.