SPORTS
courtesy Firebirds/Rick Cornell
Firebirds vs. Atlanta in spring 2021
FIRED UP! A new brand of professional basketball in Raleigh fuses competition and community by LORI D. R. WIGGINS
F
or more than a decade, Wade Harris has provided academic and athletic mentoring to preteen and teen boys at his Raleigh Personal Training Center, a fitness center in north Raleigh. Along the way, he combined his passion for helping young men and his love of basketball by sponsoring a southeast Raleigh team for summer league games hosted in the Saint 34 | WALTER
Augustine’s University gymnasium. Frequently, Harris found himself working with young men — many of whom enjoyed some glimpses of stardom at collegiate and semi-professional levels — who dreamed of staying in the paint professionally. In 2017, Harris’ business, Pro Basketball Raleigh, LLC, purchased rights to own a professional basketball team in
Raleigh, and two years later he joined the one-year-old The Basketball League (TBL) as Team Market Owner of the Raleigh Firebirds. “With so much talent here and so many players looking to continue to play basketball, it made sense to establish a team in Raleigh,” Harris says. TBL is the brainchild of Evelyn Magley. As the wife of a college player turned NBA pro, Magley “got an education on
