The text chain can be as simple as checking in about family members and milestones for each other’s kids, or as detailed as potential business opportunities to be considered. The most active texters are the retired players — Garnett, Pierce, Perkins and Allen — who regularly trade insults, and often get together in person in Los Angeles, where each of them has a home except Perkins, though he is regularly in town for his television duties. Garnett talks the most trash; when Perkins retired, he teased his friend on the chain, “What you doing now? Cooking at home wearing an apron?”