In his fourth season in the NBA, Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks in points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals. Antetokounmpo's rapid ascent to All-Star status earned him Marc Stein's pick for Most Improved Player. (1:00)

Narrowing down the choice for Most Valuable Player to one name is widely considered the primary source of agony ‎for NBA year-end awards voters this spring.

Not so at Stein Line HQ.

For all of our collective MVP angst this season, I found myself wrestling with the Most Improved Player ballot just as strenuously. Trying to choose between Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic is a struggle akin to spelling or pronouncing Antetokounmpo, which remains problematic for just about everyone in the league, even in our fourth year of trying.

Yet it was indeed the Greek Freak who ultimately snagged our vote. We simply couldn’t resist rewarding him for hiking his player efficiency rating from 19.0 to a ridiculous 26.2 ... for emerging as the first player in league history to rank in the top 20 in total points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks ... and for literally getting better at everything.

Giannis Antetokounmpo raised his PER from 19 to 26.2 and made history with his all-around stats rankings. Gary Dineen/NBAE via Getty Images

No matter which category you laser in on, Giannis did it better than he did last season, powering the Bucks to their first winning season with him in town despite the fact Antetokounmpo and his top two sidekicks -- Jabari Parker and Khris Middleton -- played in exactly one game together. (Less than one game, actually, because Parker got injured during Middleton’s comeback game.)

The transformation from League Pass curiosity with tons of obvious promise to All-Star starter is also one of the most impressive leaps we can remember.

However ...

Jokic made this increasingly tricky as the season wore on, sneaking up on his own team like pretty much no one we can remember. Entering December, Jokic sported a solid but modest PER of 16.3, ranking 88th among players averaging at least 10 minutes per game at the time. Since then? Jokic has a PER of 28.8 from December on, ranking second in the whole league behind only MVP contender Russell Westbrook (31.1).

Marc Stein's Award Picks The Committee (of One) makes its picks for the NBA's end-of-season awards. • Defensive POY: Draymond Green

• Rookie of the Year: Joel Embiid

• Sixth Man of the Year: Eric Gordon

• Coach of the Year: Mike D'Antoni

• Most Improved: Giannis Antetokounmpo

• Most Valuable Player: Russell Westbrook

You can thus make the argument that Jokic, as this season unfolded, morphed from a mere top-100 player into a legitimate franchise player. It makes you wonder -- on top of Denver's issues in one-possession games and on D that we detailed in the season’s final Power Rankings as well as the ill-fated Jusuf Nurkic trade -- how differently the Nuggets might have turned out had Jokic been made a full-time starter sooner.

Just settling on a third name for this ballot is a major problem, thanks to the rise of Harrison Barnes in Dallas, Atlanta’s blossoming backcourt duo of Dennis Schroder and Tim Hardaway Jr. and one of our favorite stories in the league: Miami’s James Johnson. (It’s reached the point that the mere mention of Johnson’s name, as a worthy candidate in both the Sixth Man Award and MIP races, has us wanting to call the Heat to see whether we can talk them into launching a program for making over sports writers’ bodies.)

Players who led team in pts, ast, reb, blk, stl Season Player Team 2016-17 Giannis Antetokounmpo MIL 2008-09 LeBron James CLE 2002-03 Kevin Garnett MIN 1994-95 Scottie Pippen CHI 1977-78 Dave Cowens BOS Note: Steals and blocks became

official stats in 1973-74.

This was also an unusual season in that several established players, who normally wouldn’t be candidates in this category, forced us to rethink those norms because they made such impressive jumps. (Just to name five: Isaiah Thomas, Gordon Hayward, Kemba Walker, Bradley Beal and our 2016 MIP selection CJ McCollum.)

Yet we ultimately couldn’t resist Rudy Gobert in our No. 3 slot. Not after the considerable improvement Gobert made on offense (averaging career-bests in points, rebounds and field goal percentage) while also leading the league in blocked shots. Gobert quietly became an impact player at the other end while he was cementing himself as one of the league’s consensus top-three defenders alongside Draymond Green and Kawhi Leonard.

Jokic or even Gobert, frankly, would be a worthy MIP winner. But Giannis, in the end, has to trump them all. With as much room for growth as he still has, should he find a way to sharpen that outside shooting, Antetokounmpo exceeded even the most favorable projections for his development in Year 4. He probably should be a bigger factor in this season’s MVP discussion and presumably will be next season and beyond.

As we said after the first Trimester: Make it easy on yourself for the rest of the season while you can and just tell yourself that Antetokounmpo is pronounced M-I-P.

Official ballot: 1. Antetokounmpo; 2. Jokic; 3. Gobert.

October prediction: Aaron Gordon.