Grandson of Cult Leader Jim Jones Prepares for College Basketball Career - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Freshman forward Rob Jones is just hoping to get some playing time this year at the University of San Diego, so you ordinarily wouldn't expect to see much of him on ESPN.

But Jones will be the subject of this Sunday's Outside the Lines, and not for what he's done on the basketball floor. Jones will be profiled because he's the grandson of Jim Jones, the cult leader who orchestrated a group suicide that left 913 people dead in Guyana in 1978.

Rob Jones' father, Jim Jones Jr., also played basketball. In fact, he was on a Jonestown basketball team that traveled to play in a game in another part of Guyana just before the group suicide, and as a result he became one of the few survivors of Jonestown. He now says, "basketball literally saved my life."

Both Rob and Jim, who spoke to reporters in a conference call arranged by ESPN today, seem proud of their backgrounds, though not of what Jim Jones did. Rob, who averaged 17 points and 14 rebounds a game as a high school senior, says of his teammates and other people his age, "Most of them don't know the true story, the whole story." He says he hopes to use his college basketball career to "change his name to a positive."



As for Rob's father, he says, "I'm Jim Jones Jr. That's who I am, and that's how I was raised. I'm very proud of my name. Not in a reflection of the horrific events of Jonestown, but in what Peoples Temple tried to create, a society without racism, sexism, ageism."

(Jim Jones Jr. also says, "I still get Kool-Aid jokes, probably once a week," from people who know his name is Jim Jones but don't realize he's the son of the infamous Jim Jones.)

Outside the Lines airs Sunday at 9:30 a.m. ET on ESPN. The above photo shows the November 21, 1978 cover of the Argentinian newspaper Clarin.