I suppose the cool thing for athletes to do now is to take a stand against the media.

That’s what Kevin Durant did during the NBA All-Star break, telling the media such things as, “You guys really don’t know s—.”

To be fair to Durant, a certain intern gave him a clown question — a fanboy from the David Letterman Show asked him who’s sexier between Jeff Van Gundy and Stan Van Gundy. The failed attempt at humor helped spark a tirade from Durant where he belittled the media and rebelled against what few actual journalists were there covering him and the event. It wasn’t as good as Marshawn Lynch’s Super Bowl phrases — “Y’all know why I’m here (over and over and over again)” — but still, Durant’s diatribe, where he told reporters that he didn’t care about them and that they weren’t his friends, struck a nerve with media members around the globe.

Honestly, Durant’s histrionic outburst seemed misplaced, like if Tyler Perry would’ve been cast in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction instead of Samuel L. Jackson. I suppose that’s because of Durant’s “White Knight” role that he inherited by being the quiet sharpshooter in a small market place like Oklahoma City. Though Durant has strayed from it more and more in the past few years, Durant was looked at as the choirboy of NBA — his heartfelt MVP speech in 2014 served as the peak of that persona — but lately, he’s been dropping more F-bombs on the court than Samuel L. did on the set of Pulp Fiction.

While I don’t take offense to Durant’s outburst — I prefer a fiery athlete any day over a robot programmed to spew the same sports clichés repeatedly — I do have problems with this sudden culture change where athletes who chastise the media are suddenly the most talked about thing in sports.

Here’s my advice to the athletes — if you’re tired of being the center of attention, then give media members reason to look elsewhere. Unless Lynch and Durant are trying to establish their brands and have people talking about them, going on a tangent or repeating the same thing will only grab more headlines and have more and more people waiting to hear what you say next. If that is the end goal, then congratulations, job well done. However, if you’re really trying to avert attention like you say you are, there’s a better way of going about it. All you have to do is be boring.

When I covered LSU for the Sun Herald and Bleacher Report in 2013, I knew who to go to get a juicy quote, and more importantly, I also knew who to avoid when facing deadline. Jeremy Hill was one of the Tigers’ best players, but he hardly ever gave a memorable quote. Simply put, he was a boring interview, so when it came to interviewing him or the always-colorful Zach Mettenberger, you can imagine which player was surrounded by more reporters. Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry were my two favorite interviews because they weren’t robots, they mostly gave an honest take and they were as down to earth as you could hope, so the interview always had multiple sound bites for YouTube and/or flavorful quotes to add to stories. So if you’re looking for the media to stop asking you questions, just be boring, without repeating the same thing over and over again, please. That’s counterproductive.

But of course, I have to place equal blame on writers, who sit there and continue to ask questions to Lynch who regurgitated the same phrase over and over. And then you go and write about it? You don’t have to talk to athletes to write about them, simply observe and report. Heck, most high school athletes barely string along more than four words in answers they give to questions. Perhaps the best athlete I’ve covered since being here, Natchez High School’s Sidney Davis, would barely give me anything to print, but because he was one of the best players in the area, I had to gain his trust, so he could share his true feelings after games. Pretty soon those three-word answers became more and more genuine, and instead of writing about a robot, I got to add colorful quotes from an authentic athlete that most kids in this area looked up to.

Davis didn’t give me short answers because he was trying to be coy. He did it because he was humble. Sad to see the day a high school player represent himself better than a few pros.