It is early February, and basketball has brought Rob Jones and his father, Jim Jones Jr., to senior night at San Francisco's Archbishop Riordan High School. Rob is the best high school basketball player in the Bay Area. He's 6-foot-6 and 230 pounds -- a forward with strength and quickness.

"His 'Wow!' factor is rebounding and positioning down low," says his coach, Rich Forslund. "He dominates at the high school level down there. Virtually anybody he plays, he gives them grief."

And this night is no exception: Rob racks up 30 points and 17 rebounds.

"It was his time, it was his moment," his father says with pride. "He made sure everybody knew it."

Rob's success holds special meaning for his father. Years ago, he also had a basketball team, a team he loved and will never forget.

"I wouldn't be talking to you if it wasn't for basketball," Jim Jones Jr. says. "It spared my life."

The words are not an empty cliché. They are true. Basketball kept this family alive, and now Rob and basketball are helping restore honor to the family name.

Why? Because the name "Jones" can be found in the history books and in news coverage from 29 years ago, linked to an infamous place called Jonestown. There, in November 1978, more than 900 men, women and children died in a mass suicide orchestrated by the Rev. Jim Jones, founder and leader of Jonestown -- and the grandfather of Rob Jones.

The Jonestown basketball team played on a court built in the compound on a platform floor in a place originally intended to be a storehouse. FBI

"I'll be walking through the hallways at school and people will say, 'We talked about you in history class,'" Rob says. "I just say, 'Yeah, that's my grandfather,' and kinda walk away with a smile."

But that hasn't kept Rob from taking time to ponder his grandfather.

"I was walking through Borders and they had '101 Most Infamous Criminals in U.S. History' or something, and you open it up to Jim Jones Sr.," Rob says. "It just kind of blows you away that he was that big of a character in United States history."

That history began after stops in Indiana and rural Northern California, when the Rev. Jones landed in San Francisco. There, in the mid-1970s, he used social activism, radicalized rhetoric and elements of that old-time religion, like purported acts of faith healing, to whip the multicultural congregation of Peoples Temple into a fervor. He was undeniably charismatic, and manipulative.

"My father was a master of finding what was most important to you [and] finding a way to make you believe he was giving it to you," says Stephan Jones, 48, the biological son of the Rev. Jones. "I know that's how I was worked."

The Rev. Jim Jones moved his followers from the United States to Guyana, where he built Jonestown. FBI

The Rev. Jones became a political force in San Francisco politics. Yet when questions were raised about abuses within Peoples Temple, he moved his flock to South America and created a would-be utopia -- Jonestown -- in the jungles of Guyana, which neighbors Venezuela.

"I believed. I believed we could change the world," says Jim Jr., 47, who was the first African-American child in Indiana state history to be adopted by a white couple: the Rev. Jim and Marceline Jones.

But when the Rev. Jones arrived in Guyana for good in August 1977, some who already were there felt the magnetism that had created Peoples Temple was devolving into paranoia and madness.

"When Dad got down there," Stephan says, "work immediately went from being a means of production to a means of control the atmosphere was immediately oppressive."

Jonestown was accessible only by boat or plane, a big change for people like Johnny Cobb who were accustomed to San Francisco.

"You know, you don't have the fast-food places to go to," says Cobb. "You don't have this corner store to go to. No television. Within two months you find yourself reading more books. Start doing other things. Playing sports again."

So a basketball hoop was erected in the encampment, built on a platform floor in a place originally intended to be a storehouse. For the young men who played there, the game became a kind of organized defiance against the Rev. Jones.

"I remember, even in Jonestown, basketball being such a release," Stephan says, "a place to go to let go of all of our frustration and rage . It was a borderline rebellious act for us to play organized ball. We always felt guilty."

A Guyanese government official offered them a chance to compete in a tournament against the region's national teams in the capital city of Georgetown, a two-hour plane ride away. The Rev. Jones agreed to let the team go, seizing a chance to get some good publicity for Peoples Temple.

"You have the opportunity to make or break Jonestown," the Rev. Jones told them in an address that, like almost all of his other utterances, was captured on audiotape. " Your winning of the game is essential, but it's how you play that game, 'cause a lot of people are gonna be watching. You can do tremendous PR for us."