Klay Thompson, man on the street, offers some sound scaffolding safety advice

A scaffold collapsed in Manhattan, sending New Yorkers scrambling to save those trapped beneath the temporary maintenance structure and news crews scouring for man-on-the-street interviews.

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The city’s Fox affiliate was lucky to find the world’s foremost scaffolding expert on the scene:

Wait a second, isn’t that … yeah, that’s Golden State Warriors guard and NBA All-Star Klay Thompson, who apparently studies scaffolding on the regular. “I usually observe if the piping and stuff is new,” he said. “Sometimes, you know, if something looks like it’s been there a while, I try to kind of avoid that.”

You hear that, kids? If “the piping and stuff” looks new, it’s safe to walk through. If “something looks like it’s been there a while,” don’t end up in the scaffolding pile. Words to live by from Klay Thompson.

This brought back fond memories of China Klay, a seemingly alternate timeline Thompson who will eat smoking hot food, airball 3-pointers, lose in armwrestling, spectacularly miss dunks and dance like nobody’s watching. So, this revelation of Thompson’s scaffolding knowledge makes you wonder:

Credit New York’s Fox affiliate for acknowledging Thompson’s profession as “NBA player.” The same can’t be said of Houston’s Fox station, which stopped former NFL MVP Adrian Peterson on the street to ask him about how to stay safe during a road rage incident and described him only as “Driver.”

I like to imagine this is how the conversation between the news reporter and Thompson went down:

Reporter: “Thank you for your astute analysis of scaffolding. Can I get your name?”

Thompson: “Klay Thompson.”

Reporter: “And what’s your profession, Mr. Thompson? Scaffolding inspector, perhaps?”

Thompson: “NBA player.”

Reporter: “Are you sure you’re not some sort of scaffolding structural engineer, Mr. Thompson?”

Thompson: “You can call me American Klay.”

Thompson then made his way to Barclays Center, steering clear of the piping and stuff that’s been there a while, and put on his NBA player suit to score 23 points in a 118-111 win over the Brooklyn Nets.

Long live Klay Thompson, NBA player, scaffolding observer, man on the street, legend.

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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach