The New York Times’ Andrew Keh wrote an important exposé on mouth guard usage in the NBA. The upshot is that it’s good to protect your teeth, but hard to figure out what to do with the thing when you’re not using it:
NBA players’ mouth guard habits are disgusting and we have a solution
Mason Plumlee of the Nets tucks his mouthpiece inside one of his socks, which he acknowledged is “not the most sanitary place in the world.” Rajon Rondo of the Dallas Mavericks has been observed spitting his straight down through the collar of his jersey - though where it lands, exactly, has remained something of a mystery. Cole Aldrich of the Knicks often takes the curved, wet plastic and hooks it around one of his ears.
I am a Knicks fan long-appalled by mouth guard hygiene, first by Al Harrington tucking it into his headband, and now by the Aldrich ear trick mentioned above. All of this is repulsive and dangerous. A plastic thing you put in your mouth should touch other parts of your body as little as possible, not reside there collecting germs.
Thankfully, we have a solution. I invented it. It is called the SB Nation Mouth Guard Solution. The patented mechanism is Flex-StacheTM, a hinged connector that clips to the athlete’s septum, then flips outward when the guard is not in use:
That’s just a design. Prototypes are being manufactured as we speak. This is a very good invention. To preorder one, please mail $27.99 plus shipping and handling to Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Avenue, Washington, D.C.
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