Photos: Jim Jones gets Southern Hospitality @ Converse Band of Ballers

slideshow-1

Converse took over Atlanta with its 2nd annual celebrity 3-on-3 basketball tournament, Band of Ballers. Friday night's kick-off party at Georgia Freight Depot gave a sneak preview of Converse's fall 2010 shoe line, as well as the line-up of players participating in Saturday's tournament.

Six celebrity-led teams competed for the win to snatch this year's title from reigning champs, the Jones Family. The shit-talking began a little bit before noon on Saturday in a Clark Atlanta University locker room when the Jones Family leader Jim Jones (ok, this is starting to sound extra cult-ish) started tweeting pep talks to his team and fans, alike.

The competition began with V-103's Rashan Ali hosting and DJ Green Lantern on the 1s and 2s. The wins were determined by the first team to 10 points, or most points out of a 15-minute quarter. Athens band Of Montreal didn't get too far with one member sporting a sparkly mask. Atlanta flower punk the Black Lips were left behind as well with their lace-front wigs and tight shorts. It was almost hard to take them seriously on the court. The So So Def team was fun to watch and had some great players, but I was more fascinated to discover that Jermaine Dupri is shorter than Shawty Lo - whose shorts did not sag but still touched his ankles.

The Bad News (Brooklyn) team did what they could and Jay Electronica definitely held it down, but when I tried to catch up with the self-proclaimed Atlanta Brave, Donnis, I got in a bit of a mess.

"You're from Creative Loafing?! Nah nah, y'all be talking about me. I'm No. 1 on MTV and the streets fuck with me, and I can't get no love from home?!" the MC exclaimed. Guess he's still pissed over the review we published last October. After all that, he was still eager to put me up on his new mixtape Fashionably Late, dropping in early June. But I'm not exactly sure if he wants CL to check for it.