Soles

Basketball arrived in Mexicali as a league franchise rather than a grassroots side, and by 2005 the city had Soles in the LNBP. The team took the desert into its name and its identity: the Auditorio del Estado, where they play, holds 4,426 and is known as "La Caldera" for the noise fans raise there.

Mexicali's club has spent most of its life among the league's leaders. It won the national championship in its first run of success in 2006, beating Halcones UV Xalapa with Horacio Llamas at the centre of that team, then added titles in 2014–15, 2017–18 and 2019–20, the last of those against Fuerza Regia.

The fixture against Halcones de Xalapa carries its own name in Mexico, the Clásico Nacional, and Fuerza Regia has supplied several of the club's tighter series. Import players have moved through Mexicali on their way elsewhere, among them Kenneth Faried and Daniel Hamilton, but the player Soles fans still measure others against is Juan Toscano-Anderson, who started his professional career in the orange and black.