The League Office informed Brian Schmitz that Hedo Turkoglu is not out of the running for the Most Improved Player award, despite the fact that Turkoglu is in his eighth season.
File photo by Fernando Medina, NBAE/Getty Images

• After exchanging emails with an NBA official, Brian Schmitz says Hedo Turkoglu is still eligible to win Most Improved Player, even though Turk is in his eighth NBA season. He certainly deserves some kind of recognition after getting screwed out of the All-Star game.
• Tim Povtak notes that the Magic are raising their season-ticket prices next year. That increase, coupled with some factors at the Rock household, assures that I won't be attending many, if any, Magic games next season. Bummer. Major, major bummer. Also a bummer: Keyon Dooling is once again out of the rotation. Free Keyon!
• Mark Cuban, the outspoken billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has controversially banned bloggers from the Mavericks' locker room. Henry Abbott of TrueHoop has a brilliantly concise rundown of the situation here. Anyway, Hardwood Paroxysm offered its take on the Cuban Blogger Crisis in this post. An excerpt:

  The point is that I believe there is every reason for blogs to be given access to team personnel. I have absolutely no doubt that if the Magic were to give Third Quarter Collapse access that they would be thrilled with the coverage. It's not like Ben Q. is going to go in and ask a bunch of improper questions. He's not going to turn around and rip the team unfairly. He's a fan, for God's sake. And giving him access is only going to provide another way for your fans to feel "involved" with their team.

  Yeah, I'd be all over that job if I had the opportunity.

  • HP passed along this video of Brett Pentway, the D-League's slam-dunk champion, challenging Dwight Howard to a dunk contest.
  • It's Kobe Bryant Blog Day.

Some site-related self-indulgence after the jump.

Still here? Cool.

• Le Basketbawl compiled a ranking of the top 25 NBA blogs. 3QC made the cut at no. 16; it's holding steady at no. 19 in BallHype's rankings.
• After last night's win over the Hawks, I emailed Basketbawful to nominate Atlanta's Mario West and our very own Dwight Howard for today's Worst of the Night feature; West merited consideration for needlessly prolonging the game, an Howard merited consideration for stealing rebounds from Hedo Turkoglu. Per the Orlando Sentinel's recap:

  Turkoglu said he would have posted the triple-double by the third period if Howard wasn't "stealing" rebounds.

  "I was telling him, 'I need just one and you can have the others.' Finally, he gave me one, so that one is nice," Turkoglu said.

  As you can see, my email bore fruit.

The community here at 3QC is growing, slowly but surely, and I wanted to thank the readers who help make this site what it is. Thanks, once again, for everything.