Floater chronicles Chinatown Basketball Club’s NY legacy
June 13, 2026
by Kelly Rogers
After five years of nurturing community pickup basketball in Chinatown, Chinatown Basketball Club documents its story in print. Floater: Blurring Basketball Lines chronicles the first five years of CBC, a pickup basketball community that began in 2019 with Herb Tam, Lu Zhang, and a small group of dedicated players. The book offers a unique blend of personal essays and collaborative art to re-imagine basketball aesthetics and ethos. Here, 4N editor Kelly Rogers talks basketball with the artists and CBC co-founders.
Find CBC @chinatownbasketballclub and get a copy of Floater at chinatownbasketball.club.
Kelly Rogers: Floater covers Chinatown Basketball Club from 2019 to 2024, but it goes a lot deeper into the history of basketball in Chinatown, back to the ‘40s. When you started working on this, did you know you wanted to include that deeper history?
Herb Tam: Working at MOCA (Museum of Chinese in America), I had seen a lot of basketball material in our collection that predates Chinatown Basketball Club, and was drawn to anything basketball related. I found things in our archive from the ‘70s, like scattered images of pick-up basketball in Columbus Park where we play, and even further back from other athletic organizations, club teams organized by community leaders. When Lu and I started CBC in 2019, we used words and images to try to get people to play with us. Before we were on Instagram, we would email people and recap our games in an overly-enthusiastic way. And once we started an Instagram, we wanted to create images and graphics to help people understand where we were coming from, that we were Asian–that seemed important. And that’s how we thought of this history of basketball through an Asian or Asian-American lens. My angle was the local archives, and Lu’s entry point was pop culture.
Lu Zhang: I learned about basketball through pop culture, growing up in China and seeing things from Hong Kong and Japan. It was manga first, then NBA. I remember seeing female players from China in the WNBA in the 80s, or pop stars re-creating slam dunk images. So for CBC, we wanted to bring in how we grew up with basketball, too. As a female, as an Asian, I felt very self-conscious going out for pickup basketball on the street. It felt more safe and intimate to start with closer friends. We started as a really small group, five or six people to play with. In the very beginning that visual language hadn’t come in yet, it was more about creating a safe space for each other where we could continue to play.
KR: There are so many different entry points, and I love the mix of local histories and celebrity pop culture. These are all very different versions of basketball, in a way. How big is CBC now, as its grown from that initial, small group? Or is that hard to measure?
HT: If the weather is really nice, we’ll get 40 to 50 people to come out on a Sunday. In the winter, if it’s really cold—and to me that’s actually most impressive, winter basketball at Columbus Park—we’ll get 15 to 20 people out in like 30 degree weather.
KR: That’s dedication.
HT: And that’s more revealing of how strong the connection is between the people and the idea of what this is.
LZ: The gesture of coming out on a Sunday, that’s what CBC is. People bring friends and feel this urge to represent CBC themselves, which we’re really touched by. It expands beyond just us maintaining it.
Flipping through the pages of Floater and seeing all the eclectic posters, it’s got to be like “Oh my god, we did all of this?”
LZ: It does feel like that, yeah.
KR: The essays in the book are also uniquely framed, but one thing that stood out to me is this self-critical aspect, the perfectionism, of people who play being kind of hard on themselves. Like Sean’s essay about being a short basketballer, and Alex’s obsession with becoming a really good shooter. Obviously we know professional athletes are in this headspace, but this also exists in the recreational space too.
HT: If you look at a lot of basketball literature, it carries this kind of heroic story arc, or telling redemption stories. But the Asian voice isn’t really represented in this mainstream basketball literature. So this book was an opportunity to provide that alternative. As editors we didn’t really give our contributors much of a prompt, but everyone was ready to go into those personal traumas in a way I don’t think you would see otherwise. That’s something unique about the book, having very naked expressions of these physical and mental liabilities of being an Asian basketball player.
KR: Right, it’s so personal and you really feel that in these essays. I mean, Lu, you literally include scanned pages of your diary—you can’t get much more personal than that.
LZ: That’s something we were surprised by, because we just asked them very simply to think of their own basketball journey. During our book launch at Printed Matter, Sean was there and was trying to explain his essay to the crowd. There was a long pause and finally he just said “You can just read about it.” And maybe he wasn’t ready to talk about it, but he wrote it for us, and I was really touched by that. Originally this book was just to share with each other, within our own community. We didn’t think it would have an audience broader than the club itself. Like Herb was saying, there are all these books about how to be a star player or get into professional basketball, but nothing about feelings of failure. Being vulnerable on the basketball court is the most powerful thing.
LZ: Yeah, that’s how we ask people for posters, too. We don’t have much of an expectation, we’re just asking “What do you want to express?” It’s more exciting that way, and a lot of times people surprise themselves, too.
KR: This brings us to the way that the visual arts play into CBC. In the book you talk about this separation, historically, of sports and science and art, in their own little worlds. But as you get deeper into it, especially in this specific slice of community, there’s more of a confluence between basketball and art that’s a lot more natural than one might think. You even suggest that maybe this separation was just an illusion this whole time, and acting out your own kind of basketball and community as if that boundary doesn’t exist. Basketball can be art in the same way that like, when we talk about publishing and “What is a book?” or “What is a zine?” the deeper you go, anything is possible. Like, a sandwich could be a zine. You can expand your definitions of these things sort of infinitely.
HT: Yeah, I think that’s what’s been nice about the club for me and Lu, it’s given us an outlet away from the art world that we work in, but it’s also on our own terms, completely outside of a conventional art space. In the art world there’s so much of the “Who you know,” what’s your cultural capital, and that determines who you want to talk to or what doors open up for you. But for CBC, you can just show up. Anybody can come to the park at 10am on a Sunday and play.
Another interesting thing about the dynamic of Sundays is that there are a lot of artists that are part of the group, and it could actually turn into a situation where people are showing up to hang out and drink coffee and not play basketball at all. Basketball is still at the center of it, but it’s given us a different way to relate to artists and art and other people who are doing interesting things.
LZ: For me, too. It’s an outlet out of the artist’s world, from making art itself. I’ve never been interested in making something for the purpose of being exhibited in a space. That relationship feels very singular—it’s just the object, the space itself, and then who has the privilege to enter this space? That rose a lot of questions for me, about why do I even make art, and how can I share things with the public in a way that they can relate to it. I always thought I was a really chill and calm person, but I’m really a rebel. I never wanted to fit in, and trying to make art that “fit” was hard for me. When people ask what CBC is, it’s hard to define. It’s a basketball club. It’s an art project. It’s its own organism, but it’s always been this kind of middle ground. From there we discovered a lot of philosophical connections between basketball and art, creatively and competitively. And I think this comes through in the book as well.
KR: It’s its own little ecosystem in the same way that art spaces function, and I think there’s an interesting parallel between basketball having a dedicated space where people are able to watch from the outside and art having a specific space where people are able to look and observe. But as you say with these spaces that have limited access or a barrier to entry, things typically get much more interesting when you can dissolve that and invite varying levels of engagement or spectating. It sounds like it’s really important for CBC to make it easy for people to choose to enter the game if they want to.
HT: Although there’s a tension there too, because we do want it to be a space where people can come and do their thing, but as basketball players we also want it to be known as a space for good, competitive pickup basketball. We do want it to be completely open and not intimidating. So I think Sunday School is that space for introducing people to the game, or re-introducing people to the game. But there is always a tension that Lu and I are balancing, to make sure that these different sides of CBC are being nurtured. A lot of people who teach Sunday School are the ones who are playing very competitively at CBC, and they really understand that balance of being a welcoming presence while still holding that athleticism.
LZ: We were in Hong Kong recently playing with three kids, and my mom was waiting for us. They were really young, like 10-11 years old. And the game got really intense, like we really wanted to win and we were all fighting hard. So my mom passes this court on her way back from shopping and is like–what are you doing?? And I was like, I want a good game, I want it to be competitive. And my mom was like, “Oh they’re just kids, let them win.” And to her I just said quietly, “I want to win too.”
It was a funny moment, but it makes me appreciate the competitiveness in basketball, it’s this thing people have at their core, and they just want to win. That focused intensity is so beautiful in sports that you just don’t see anywhere else. Then you bring teamwork into the picture, and you have to balance your own individual desires with how the team works together. It’s a constant awareness that we hope to balance between community and competitiveness. Within the sport itself it’s an unresolved question—you want to be the best player that makes the winning goal, but you want to also work as a team and stand up for them.
KR: I think two things can be true at once, right? There can be an inviting energy and a seriousness.
LZ: When a basketball player wants a win, it can get really serious but it’s also really fun to watch.
KR: That’s what makes it so exciting, that passion.
LZ: But in art, nobody says “I want this win.” Like where in the art world would people say this?
KR: Oh, like what’s the equivalent?
LZ: Yeah, what do you compete for… the love of the collectors? In art it’s so subjective and personal.
KR: Right, and your relation to that outside-looking-in perspective of art has been shaped so heavily by basketball. Have you noticed, in your time developing CBC, that your relationship to basketball has changed?
HT: I mean, I love basketball. It was like a bridge to everything for me—a way to understand myself better, feel better about myself when I played while I was young. It was an entry point to cultural stuff, like fashion. When I didn’t know what to wear I would just dress how the basketball players dressed. I always wore basketball shorts underneath my pants, because I wanted to be ready to play whenever the opportunity came. I’ve also always thought aesthetically that it’s such a beautiful game. When I was first getting into art, I would draw basketball players because I liked the way they looked and I like the uniforms.
I wasn’t very good when I was young, but I was very competitive and I hated to lose. Because I saw players like Larry Bird, who hated to lose, and I wanted to be like that guy. But with CBC kicked off this ongoing transformation for me, where I just like being out there on the court and having a social space where basketball is a conduit for interaction. When I’m out there now I don’t play that much, I’m just like shooting, joking around, and this sounds cheesy but saying hi to people to make sure that they’re being seen.
KR: You’re the host! It’s like hosting a party.
LZ: But when you do play, you’re serious. Like, you play hard.
HT: Yeah, but I have my limits now. Now I’m thinking about, if I play Sunday I don’t want to be all messed up on Monday, you know.
LZ: But then sometimes we’ll go home and Herb will say, “I lost all my games today.”
KR: He’s still thinking about it after he’s left.
LZ: While writing my essay for the book, I was thinking about how I observe people while they play, and what that can tell you about how they are in real life. Who they are as a player is who they are as a person. There are so many different personalities on the court, and I feel like I’m kind of a facilitator, but more in the background. I like to help other people do things. I felt this as an artist too—I didn’t want attention, or for people to only look at me. When I was younger, I liked passing the ball a lot. I wanted to help other players lead the score. I found this page in my diary from when I was 16, where I wrote that when I was playing, I wasn’t looking at the basket, I was looking around the court, trying to find my teammates and figure out where they were going. I’m paying attention to where they’re running so I can pass the ball to them, and I feel more satisfied if we win as a team, if everyone scores rather than if I score. And I realized that even now that’s still true.
I took a long break from playing basketball, for about 10 years, and almost forgot about myself as a basketball player. In 2013 I injured my knee, and my biggest fear was that I couldn’t play basketball anymore. During that break I came to the states to study art, and there weren’t any other women around me playing basketball. It wasn’t until I met Herb and started CBC that I played again. And in writing this essay, it reminded me how important basketball has been to me, since I was very young.
The best time I had as a kid was playing basketball at my grandfather’s house. In the summer I would play until the lights turned off at 10pm, and I’d go home exhausted. Since my childhood it’s been a space for me to escape to. My heart was always in this. Even though we work a lot and it’s tiring, it’s still a comforting group to be around. I realized that this childhood utopia has just reappeared in New York, as CBC. I want to maintain that relationship with myself, my inner child, no matter how much it takes.
KR: Who do you hope picks up this book?
HT: We really were thinking it would mostly be for those involved with CBC, but it’s been interesting to see who has picked it up. Especially getting it into bookstores, because they are their own little community centers. People who are into design have been interested in this, like creative people who are in the world of basketball and branding. So it’s made us think about a more expanded world for the book. It would be cool if it made its way into basketball groups in Asia that are like us.
LZ: We’re not the first basketball club, and not the first Asian basketball organizers in New York—the New York Rockits have been around for 40 years now, and the Dynasty League turned 20 last year. I’ve really enjoyed hearing from other people about it, and we’re hoping to send this message out through the book so that people can find us, and we can find each other.
KR: And that just speaks to the importance of archiving and documentation, especially for smaller local communities to reach others.
On this eve of Game 5, what does it mean to CBC to get to root for New York in the NBA Finals?
HT: For CBC this historic NYC basketball moment is something we feel even more a part of, given that we hoop as a way to exalt simply being together. The Knicks reflect New York City so beautifully—the multiculturalism, the grittiness, the weirdness. We all see ourselves in this Knicks team.