The last time the ratings were this bad was never. Silver wishes he had 2007 Spurs v Cavs ratings. That was a series that was noncompe ive and super boring and yet it still outperformed this years finals. Bad story line? A Lakers franchise that was left for dead and huge nonfactor for nearly a decade. A team brought back to life from the ashes by Lebron James. That's a huge story line. It's the second biggest market in all of the NBA. Also Lebron gets the most votes for all star team out of every single player so clearly some people like him. You ain't passing the nose test with this bull.
Also the whole reason why Lebron is disliked to begin with (for the majority of his haters) is bc of his politics. The Bucks quit a playoff game in outrage of a shooting of a rapist and sex offender. Then the whole NBA sent out a referendum discussing how police need to do better and how racist we are. Then Silver allowed his league to honor a rapist, sex offender, and had a restraining order against him. This turned off a lot of people. And by my logic, yes the ratings were down last year for the NBA as a whole when they did get political. They were down by 23% if i remember correctly. The NBA finals were high bc of the Warriors for sure, you are right about that, people wanted the Raptors to beat them, but overall as a whole the league viewership was down 23% last year
This year they lost 40% viewership as a whole and 70% as a Finals. But politics have nothing to do with it