Matas Buzelis was in a situation every professional basketball player dreads.
In a recent game, Buzelis, the 6′ 10′′, 20-year-old small forward entering his second season with the Chicago Bulls, came down on another player’s foot after leaping. This sickening scenario often means an ankle injury is about to occur, especially for players like Buzelis with a lengthy history of them dating back to his high school years.
“I felt my ankle starting to go,” Buzelis recalls via email.
And then … it didn’t. Buzelis played on. And he gives the credit to a new ankle protection technology currently spreading around the NBA.
Buzelis is one of a number of NBA players who, in the last few years, have begun using “adaptive” ankle brace tech from a company called BetterGuards. The new approach to ankle protection is headlined by a seat-belt-like “locking” mechanism around the outside of the ankle, combined with a level of fit and comfort that’s previously been impossible to achieve with bulky ankle braces. The company touts impressive numbers for both ankle injury prevention and recovery scenarios, claiming over two thirds of the NBA’s teams have ordered BetterGuards for their players.
They’ve got NBA trainers excited, too—so much so that BetterGuards and the National Basketball Athletic Training Association recently partnered up. The NBA will be an incubator of sorts, allowing some of the world’s best athletes to have a direct hand (foot?) in improving this still-young technology. The eventual goal is to make a real dent in one of the most common injuries not just in basketball, but in the broader sport and general populations—and perhaps to eventually apply similar sorts of technology to other common injuries.
Courtesy of Betterguards
Joint Effort
“You could fill up Madison Square Garden 10 times a week with the number of ankle injuries in the US alone,” proclaims BetterGuards CEO and managing director Tony Verutti.
He’s right, or at least close. WebMD estimates an average of 25,000 Americans sprain their ankle every day (MSG’s capacity is around 20,000). Either way, the point stands.
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