By Jimmy Carlton Sportswriter Published Oct 23, 2017 at 7:06 PM Photography: David Bernacchi

It’s October, and a Wisconsin sports figure is his league’s frontrunner for Most Valuable Player. No, it’s not two-time NFL MVP Aaron Rodgers – who, sadly, is out at least two more months with a broken collarbone. It’s Bucks sudden superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has soared to the top of the NBA MVP race, thanks to his high-flying start to the season and eye-popping stats.

Of course, we’re less than 5 percent of the way through the season, but if there’s anyone worth overreacting about less than 5 percent of the way through the season, it’s Giannis. Following four peerless performances, Antetokounmpo was averaging a league-leading 36.8 points, as well as 10.8 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 1.3 blocks per game, with a player efficiency rating (PER) of 40.4, which would be the highest of all time for an entire season.

Of course, again, this is all premature, breathless overreaction right now, but that’s kind of the point. Bucks fans – and now, considering what Green Bay is dealing with, all Wisconsin sports fans – are exuberantly giddy just to have something, someone, to overreact about this early in the season. Typically, people start paying attention to the Bucks in February, after Rodgers and the Packers and the NFL are officially done. But the 22-year-old Greek Freak is making not only Wisconsinites, but the entire sports world, take notice right now.

One week ago, Antetokounmpo's league MVP odds were 7-1, which ranked fifth among NBA players. Now, he's the favorite at 9-4, according to the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook, ahead of LeBron James (4-1), Kawhi Leonard (6-1) and Kevin Durant (13-2).

Besides his counting stats, Antetokounmpo is shooting an unbelievable 65.9 percent from the field and has a 35.9 usage percentage. And while Real Plus-Minus isn’t available yet for this season, his unadjusted box-score plus-minus is a league-high 15.6 points per 100 possessions above an average player; last year, when he was Second-Team All-NBA, it was 7.6 points above.

In Milwaukee’s 113-110 victory over Portland on Saturday night at the BMO Harris Bradley Center, Antetokounmpo scored a career-high 44 points – on 17-of-23 shooting, with eight rebounds, four assists, two blocks and two steals – and pretty much single-handedly won the game for the Bucks down the stretch. After missing a pair of free throws, Antetokounmpo had a steal, a go-ahead dunk and the clinching block, the only player in the NBA over the last 10 years with a steal, a block and the go-ahead field goal in the final 30 seconds of a game.

For his red-hot start to the 2017-18 campaign, Antetokounmpo was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week for the third time in his career. With 37 points in the season-opening win at Boston, 34 points in the loss to James and the Cavaliers, 44 against the Trail Blazers and 32 (plus 14 rebounds) in a win over the Hornets at the Bradley Center on Monday night, Antetokounmpo's 147 total points so far passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most in franchise history through the teams' first four games of a season.

He also became the second NBA player ever to average at least 35 points, 10 rebounds and five assists over his team's first four games of a season, joining Russell Westbrook, who did it last year on his way to winning MVP.

Challenged over the summer by Lakers legend Kobe Bryant to win the MVP award, Antetokounmpo has quickly become the talk of the NBA, as fans and media delight in his exciting, indescribable and rapidly, dramatically improved game – Giannis has increased his statistics in every category each of his first four years. In a basketball zeitgeist dominated by highlight-reel dunks, social media attention and superstar accessibility, Antetokounmpo is now unquestionably one of the faces of the league.

Typically, MVP winners come from one of the best teams in the conference. Since 1985, only Michael Jordan in 1987-88 and Westbrook last season were on teams ranked below the top two in their conference; only Westbrook was on a team that won fewer than 47 games, and he averaged a triple-double to do it.

The Bucks will be hard-pressed to win 48 – and their more important goal should be to win a first-round playoff series – but if there’s one player who can lead them to where they want to go, it’s MVP frontrunner Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Jimmy Carlton Sportswriter

Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.

After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.

Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.