Mindoro Tamaraws

Games at Pola Gymnasium spill past the doors most nights, with crowds finding standing room wherever they can, in a hall never built to hold a professional franchise. It says something about a club that has spent nearly its whole existence looking for a name to settle on.

The Tamaraws joined the Maharlika Pilipinas Basketball League (MPBL) as an expansion side for the 2019–20 Lakan Cup, playing then out of a 445-seat hall in Calapan. Within three years the franchise had rebranded twice — first as the Mindoro Tams in 2022, then as the Oriental Mindoro Disiplinados the following season — before the Tamaraws name returned in 2024, alongside the move to Pola.

On court, the record has been harder to fix. The 2022 season closed with a single win against twenty defeats, the worst mark in the league that year. The furthest the club has gone came in the 2021 MPBL Invitational, where it reached the quarterfinals before Basilan Jumbo Plastic ended the run, a result matched again in the 2025 Division Quarterfinals against Quezon Huskers.

The town has stayed close to the team regardless. Justin Tan owned the club and coached it through its first two seasons, and Jennifer Cruz, Pola's mayor, joined as co-owner in 2020, tying the franchise to local government in a way few MPBL sides can match.

Mindoro carries no derby of its own — it remains the only team in the league from the Mimaropa region — so its sharpest contests come against the Muntinlupa Cagers and the Parañaque Patriots, South Division rivals the Tamaraws still measure themselves against.