ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Detroit Lions general manager Bob Quinn couldn't resist. When he found out the connection between a prospect he was evaluating, Tracy Walker, and his loquacious star cornerback, Darius Slay, he needed something to be able to rib him with.

And considering that Slay -- one of the best corners and talkers in the league -- believes he is good at everything, including basketball, Walker gave him something really, really good to work with.

Walker believes he's a better basketball player than Slay -- and probably is considering part of why he ended up at Louisiana is because he was initially planning on playing basketball along with football.

So Walker told Quinn that and then Quinn used it on Slay -- relaying the story after the Lions drafted Walker in the third round Friday night, which reunited him with his second cousin from Brunswick, Georgia: Slay.

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"You try to lighten these kids up when you interview them and you try to get them a little bit out of their element, so I'm like, 'All right, tell me something about Darius that I don't know so I can see him in the locker room and give him some stuff about,'" Quinn said. "So he said, 'He thinks he's really good at basketball but he's not.' So me being the wise guy, I saw Darius the next day and said, 'Guess what your boy said about you.'

"You know Darius, he was laughing and joking, 'I don't know.' I said, 'You're not very good at basketball.' And he went off, like 'what are you ...' Darius is funny, though. They have a really good relationship."

Quinn said Slay didn't campaign for the Lions to take Walker, but that he thinks it'll be a fun interaction. He joked they might put Walker and Slay, both defensive backs, on opposite sides of the locker room.

Slay helped his second cousin throughout the draft process -- a process that saw him taken by the Lions in the second round in 2013.

"He definitely gave me a few words of advice," Walker said. "He definitely pushed me in the right path to help guide me through this process."

The two have never played together before because they missed each other in high school. But he believes their pairing -- and depending how things go, they could be a cornerback/safety combination in the future -- will be both a good opportunity and a chance to have easy, already-implemented chemistry between the relatives.

Slay tweeted his happiness Friday night, saying in part, "this is crazy," after Walker's selection. And with the two of them, it seemed to once again come back to basketball, where Walker said he is the best basketball player to ever come out of Brunswick High School.

Even Walker's best story about his cousin revolved around what else but hoops.

"When he came home and he had his little, first basketball tournament and we were at the gym," Walker said. "We basically were just having a good time, joking around and he was talking about how he’s the best basketball player.

"And I told him that my team is going to win the basketball tournament and we ended up winning the basketball tournament."

Just one more way for Walker to prove that he is the better basketball player. If he comes close to matching what Slay has done in football, though, then that'd be good for both him and the Lions.