Influenced by the anthropology of sport, this article examines leisure spaces of sport as critical venues in the formation of South Asian American ‘self ’ and ‘selves’ in opposition to, as well as in relation to, various ‘Others’. I use ethnographic research conducted with North American Indo-Pak Basketball leagues, primarily in Atlanta, Georgia, to demonstrate how South Asian American masculinity emerges in relation to ideas of ‘Blackness’. In addition, participation in Indo-Pak Basketball for South Asian American men allows for creative practices that facilitate the collapse of ‘South Asian-ness’ and ‘American-ness’ (Maira, 2002) while contesting dominant paradigms of race and gender. Through analysis of Indo-Pak Basketball and related expressive practices, I illustrate the processes of identity formation and consumption as critical to citizenship in the US national fabric. I also argue that the subversive potential in basketball masculinity and its respective pleasures are limited by its relation to a ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 1995), as well as by the consumptive logic of late capitalism through which racialized, heterosexist, patriarchal formulations of community emerge.
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