What Goes On at Firebirds Minicamp

You may have seen on social media that Mini Camp invites for the Raleigh Firebirds are slowly being revealed, which is exciting! But what is Mini Camp, and what does it have to do with the Firebirds that you see on the court in March? Today, we’re going to look at the timeline of how the Firebirds assemble a roster, as well as what goes on at Mini Camp.

Table of Contents

• Open Tryout

• Mini Camp

  • What Actually Happens at Mini Camp

• TBL Combine and Draft

• Training Camp

Open Tryout

Every year, the Firebirds hold an open tryout for prospective players. Anyone can attend, but it does cost money to be evaluated by the Firebirds. If a player registers in advance, it costs $99, but it’s $125 at the door. This year, the open tryout was on November 18th, from 10 AM-1 PM. All the players there were evaluated by Firebirds’ management, and the best players were invited to Firebirds’ Mini Camp.

Mini Camp

Mini Camp is the next level of assembling the Firebirds’ roster, and the goal of the camp is to make the most competitive training camp roster possible. The best players from the Open Tryout attend Mini Camp, to see if they’re the real deal. The competition at the Firebirds’ Mini Camp is far superior to the Open Tryout, so in the words of team market owner Wade Harris, “[We can] see if they’re what we thought they were or if they were good because of bad competition.”

What Actually Happens at Mini Camp

The Firebirds’ Mini Camp runs from January 12th to January 13th. During this time, the players will be extensively evaluated by Firebirds’ management. Mini Camp starts with a series of skill-based drills and conditioning. Soon after, the players will jump into live 5v5 action, where they will play 4-5 18-minute games. The conditioning drills are purposely done before the live scrimmages, to see if the players have the mental and physical stamina to keep up. TBL is an incredibly fast league, with players and teams that push the tempo and start fast breaks seemingly every other possession. It’s how the Firebirds were able to score 149 points in 2022. Harris says that pace is the biggest change from Open Tryout to Mini Camp to Training Camp: “The pace of the game speeds up pretty substantially with each level.”

The players are divided up as evenly as possible so every player can be equally evaluated. Aside from just the eye test of Harris and other key decision-makers, stats are kept from these scrimmages, so there’s an analytical idea of who the best players on the court are.

Saturday (the 13th) is almost entirely devoted to more scrimmages, and after the Mini Camp reaches its conclusion, a select few will have earned their spot on the training camp roster.

TBL Combine and Draft

On February 3rd and 4th of 2024, The Basketball League will hold their annual combine and draft in Indianapolis. Here, every team will get together to scout players and hold a draft. Each team will receive a first and second-round pick, which they are required to have on their training camp roster. However, there is no requirement which states that draft picks must be on a team’s final roster; they have to earn their spot. Notable Firebirds’ draft picks include Julian Harris (2019), James McKelvin (2022), and Jerome Cunningham (2023).

Training Camp

Training Camp for the Firebirds begins on February 21st and is the last step before the final roster is determined. By this point, the list of prospective Firebirds has been narrowed to 16, and four will be cut to have a final roster of 12 players. Training camp lasts for a few days, so there’s enough time to evaluate everyone. No one will get cut because they had an off day, or automatically make the team because they had a great day. Firebirds’ management will be able to have a true sense of what each player can bring to the team, and on February 25th, the team will be announced to the public.

And that’s how the Firebirds roster is assembled! I hope you found this interesting and learned some new information!

I’ll see you on Monday :)

-Tex