This Week In 🏀 can only remind you, as we always do, that the NBA's sagging TV ratings have never meant less

There are many -- MANY! -- areas for improvement for #thisleague to focus on ... but energy devoted to the nonsensical ratings conversation is energy wasted

Let's muse, on this Monday, about the decline in the NBA's television ratings.

Actually: Let's muse, on this Monday, about why so many people in my profession can't stop talking about the NBA's declining TV ratings.

Yours truly, in truth, would rather muse about just about anything else on this Monday. I am thoroughly bemused by the ratings discourse because, as I've been saying for years, TV ratings do not matter much for the NBA if the NBA can sign a media rights deal that pretty much any league in the world apart from the NFL wishes it had.

Which is exactly what we witnessed in July when the NBA finalized a new 11-year pact with ESPN, NBC and Amazon worth nearly $80 billion.

Yet after hopelessly waiting all month for this topic to fade away, I have given in. Television ratings do not and will not matter for the NBA until they materially hurt the league in negotiations with its various media rights partners, but Steiny gonna give his two cents today.

(That was indeed my attempt to pay homage to the one and only Rickey Henderson by saying it somewhat like Rickey might have.)

Five must-read musings on the matter: