Oh, no.

One day after the Pistons' season was unceremoniously curtailed by Cleveland, a San Antonio Spur referred to his team as "the bad boys." Ugh.

"We're not vanilla anymore," guard Tony Parker declared. "We're the bad boys, but it's fine. Everybody likes new stuff. So LeBron James, his first Finals, obviously, a lot of people are going to root for him. And that's fine. They still have to try to beat us."

We understand what you're saying, Mr. Longoria, but we object to you using the term. The Spurs aren't even within punching distance of the real Bad Boys.

Overheard

• Parker, on whether the Spurs are boring: "Put our team in New York, and we're winning championships and stuff like that, and they'd be loving us. We'd be like the Yankees."

• Cleveland's James, on Eastern Conference finals Game 6 hero Daniel (Boobie) Gibson: "I told Daniel before the game, 'Detroit is going to double-team me, triple-team me before I cross halfcourt, so get that gun and get it locked and loaded and just shoot it.' "

• James, on going to the Finals: "This is like a dream. This is probably the best feeling that I've ever had in my life. This is the best thing that ever happened to me, man. But look here, look here. It doesn't stop." (Hopefully, his son doesn't hear the "best thing that ever happened to me" part.)

• Pistons guard Chauncey Billups: "I'm just mad we lost four straight games to a team that I felt wasn't better than us. But, obviously, they were better than us this week."

• David Carter, of the University of Southern California's Sports Business Institute: "The guys at the NBA league office have to be pleased. Now there's a ton of buzz heading into the Finals. ... Now they have a personality they can wrap the series around."

• Greg Oden, to the New York Daily News: "With Ohio State being a football school, there wasn't as much pressure on me as there was on Troy Smith and Ted Ginn Jr. I got to mosey along as a regular guy until after the national championship. And I really can mosey."

Press clippings

• Tom Withers, Associated Press: "As confetti danced in the electrified air around him and a feverish hometown crowd rocked and rolled the night away, LeBron James was handed a new baseball cap and T-shirt. Perhaps a tasseled cap and gown would have been more appropriate. Four years after skipping college to play in the pros, James earned his NBA degree in superstardom."

• Joe Gabriele, cavs.com: "The Cavaliers began to realize that they were the better team after Game 2 in Detroit. ... The Pistons lost their cool and the Cavaliers kept theirs. And for the first time in the 37-year franchise of the organization that began with 15 straight losses, you can add 'Eastern Conference champions' to their resume. Now comes the hard part."

• Marc Stein, espn.com: "Although this couldn't have happened without the overall suckitude of the East and the favorable draw that got the Cavs to the conference finals, Cleveland advancing to the Finals with a less-than-Finals-worthy roster is a fantastic story."

• Bud Shaw, Cleveland Plain Dealer: "When does this stop resembling a Disney movie?"

• Peter May, Boston Globe: "Leave it to Kobe Bryant to steal the spotlight from the NBA's conference finals. (Then again, having witnessed much of the Rust Belt matchup between Cleveland and Detroit, maybe we all needed a distraction. The Indy 500 rain delay was watched by more people than Pistons-Cavs and for good reason: It was more exciting, until LeBron James's explosion in Game 5.)"

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