Been Hawked stealing, an NBA true-crime story

The Atlanta Hawks straight-up stole Game 1 from the Milwaukee Bucks, a caper dramatic enough to fuel an NBA true-crime heist show.

Picture a wide berth of water, almost like the ocean. But it’s not the ocean — it’s a lake — it’s a Great Lake. Picture a city skyline rising above it. No, it’s not Chicago — it’s Milwaukee. Picture the Milwaukee skyline rising above the waters of Lake Michigan. Yes, the skyline consists of buildings. Yes, just picture Chicago, but call it Milwaukee. Picture all of this in broad daylight.

Now keep a clock in your head. Measure the time. Keep that ticking sound going. Maybe tap your fingernails on the table nearby or the plastic of the remote. No, you shouldn’t bite them—it’s too early for that.

A pristine window explodes into shards.

A red-haired man wearing a bird mask is holding onto some sort of canister. The canister is some sort of gun, or maybe it’s a tool. Either way, he used that canister to blast open the window. He’s up to something. Keep an eye on him. He shouldn’t be too hard to find: He’s wearing a bird mask.

Wait, don’t leave the interior of this building that’s part of the skyline overlooking Lake Michigan. If you leave now, you’ll miss the red-haired man in the bird mask loading something that looks like a steel arrow into the canister gun that’s actually a tool. Is that a rope attached to the steel arrow? Yes, it is. He takes aim and pulls the trigger.

A man is standing on a street corner. You probably wouldn’t notice him because lots of people in cities stand on street corners in broad daylight—but I’m telling you to notice this man standing on a street corner with his back to us. He might be wearing a jumpsuit. It’s difficult to tell. A duffle bag is over his shoulder. No, it’s not blue. The duffle bag is red. Is that a motif? I don’t know. Also, his hair isn’t red. His hair is dark and unraveling from his head like ink from a squid. Thing is you probably don’t notice any of this unless I tell you to notice it. If you’re just looking at this man on a street corner, your eyes probably gravitate to the mask in his left hand. He’s facing the street, but the mask’s empty eye sockets are facing you. What kind of mask is it? I shouldn’t have to tell you. The mask looking at you with its empty sidewalk eyes is a bird mask.

Maybe now you should start biting those nails of yours.

A rugged-looking vehicle pulls up and the man climbs inside it. What is going on?

The red-haired man is suspended on a wire stretched from building to building. He is careening down the wire and over a city street. This is death-defying stuff happening in broad daylight. Behind the red-haired man is another man, also on the wire and also wearing a bird mask. Birds on a wire? Sure, go ahead and make the joke, but I think the joke is on us.

They land on a roof. Well, one lands and one sort of crashes. They offer a contrast in highwire activity.

Cut to the interior of that rugged vehicle. Three men are inside it. They are all wearing bird masks. The guy with the wiry hair in the backseat — yes, he was the one standing on the street corner earlier — well, he’s the one calling the shots. The driver follows his lead. The guy in the passenger seat obviously goes with the flow here, but, for the sake of verisimilitude, let’s just say he’s very tall and has to stoop in stature just to fit inside the moving vehicle. Everything is moving. The experience is quite dizzying.

These guys are loading weapons and talking about numbers. These guys are always yapping and yakking. They are doing math. They are calling shots. They have a plan. Do we understand the plan? Not really. But we’re realizing that something more serious than a joke might be happening here. What’s happening here? Well, I can’t exactly say at this juncture, but I will tell you this: A few laws are being broken or are about to be broken. We’re about to question the validity of how things are earned in this city by the lake that is not Chicago. We’re about to question some things, and maybe we’ll stumble on some answers too. One of the bird masks has actual feathers by the way.

The two guys in bird masks on the roof are rummaging through a duffle bag. They find a hammer. They coopt the hammer’s purpose as a tool for building and use it to bust open a metal box.

Cut to street level. There is so much movement going on. Like, seriously, it’s all orchestrated chaos. The three guys who were in the vehicle are now walking up stone steps. Are you tapping your nails? Are you keeping count? You should be. Anyway, they are somewhat skittish. They’re darting up the steps. They’re looking over their shoulders. They’re still wearing bird masks, and they are entering a revolving door. The door is framed with brass the way a lot of old downtown doors are framed in brass. Maybe they’re entering a bank. Yes, they are definitely inside a bank. And they are coming in hot and ready. Don’t be surprised if they pull this off. I mean, they put a lot of thought into all wearing bird masks. This is clearly some sort of strategy.

They are yelling at the customers who are really hostages to the whole act now. They are barking and chirping at the security guards and the tellers. Everyone is reacting to them now. They are not reacting to anyone. They are wearing bird masks.

This could get ugly. The guys on the roof are mumbling something. They have been taken off guard by something. What’s taken them off guard? I don’t know. But I imagine that when it comes to downtown bank robberies — or really any bank robberies — that things do not always go according to plan. It’s good to have a plan, but you have to be spontaneous too. You have to be willing to throw a pass off the backboard every now and then. Was that a basketball reference? Yes, yes, it was.

Something’s funny here. That’s what one of the guys is saying. The box they broke into earlier is dialing out to somewhere else in the city. You’re probably expecting someone to turn on someone here. But that’s not going to happen. I told you already these robbers are all wearing bird masks. They are not clowns.

What’s strange here is how the customers seem to be enjoying the robbery. At first, they were asking, what is this? but now they have grown accustomed to the antics. They are chirping and squawking with the men in bird masks. This is all very bad for the bank.

A man in a bird mask starts to drill into the vault. For all having the same mask, these guys sure did pack a lot of different tools. They are a very diverse group. The skillsets must have been selected and assembled with care — or reckless abandon. Oh, man, one of the bank employees wants to die on the job. One of the bank employees is walking across the room with a very serious look on his face. Not in my bank, birdmen, he must be thinking. But seriously, what’s he thinking? There are so many birdmen.

He’s barking and blasting. He’s in trouble. The bird men take care of him. The bird men are now loading money into bags. They are loading so much money into so many bags. Potentially, down the road, that money could cause them to turn on one another, to fly the coop so to speak, but right now, the money in bags is being loaded into a van. They are not leaving in the ways that brought them here. But they are leaving with all the bank money. And all the hostages are cheering as if they are social media converts. Maybe the scene of a crime is as thrilling as a backwoods revival tent. Whatever, the bird men are speeding down the highway.

Are your nails down to their nubs? They shouldn’t be. The story’s not done.

The Hawks created an NBA true-crime masterpiece

Remember that wire in the metal box that was dialing out. That line caused a light on Mike Budenholzer’s desk to light up. No, he’s not the commissioner, but he is a man of authority. When that light lit up, he opened a drawer in his desk. Inside that drawer was a green phone. That green phone can only call one other phone, and that phone is also green. When the two phones are in use, they glow neon green like two fascist-looking eyeballs stretching far and wide to surveil the world entire, or something like that.

Anyway, that green phone called the other green phone and now two men in a green car are speeding down the highway. They are rounding one of those big asphalt curves that hugs the Great Lake. They are in pursuit of that van carrying all those birdmen.

“Give it a little more gas, Jrue.”

“I’m giving it all it’s got, Khris.”

“Well, see if you can give it a little more.”

And they are getting closer. They are definitely closer than they were before. They are miles down the road. The van is in sight. The green car jerks.

“What was that?”

“Did we hit something?”

“I don’t think we hit something.”

“Well, what the hell was it?”

The it, though, is about to answer for itself. In the backseat, a deer blinks once. The deer blinks twice. The deer jolts to life. Antlers explode one window into shards. Hooves kick out another. Jrue and Khris are looking over their shoulders. The car spins out of control. Tires screech. Rubber burns. You can smell it as the car crashes into a ditch. The bird men are flying down the road in their van full of money. They’re laughing and smiling and chirping behind their masks.

“They’re getting away!” yells Khris.

“I know,” says Jrue, but Jrue isn’t watching the van ahead of him. His eyes are on the rearview mirror, and in the mirror, he can see that once sleeping buck charging into the great Midwestern woods and disappearing faster than any alarm could sound.