Last week Yao said that the Chinese need to send some of its players overseas to improve. He said it again yesterday, this time with more detail:

“As the 2008 Olympics are drawing near, we should send abroad the likes of Yi Jianlian and Wang Shipeng as soon as possible in a bid to raise our level in the short term.”

Click here for more of the story, which explains that’s going to be tough to do given past experiences with Wang ZhiZhi — lots of sitting on the bench and moving from team-to-team. But Yao refutes that argument with the following statement.

“Even if our basketballers fail to play as regulars, we still could benefit at least from their training. I played as a substitute 10 minutes per game initially, too. It depends on your will and work.”

We learned last week that the Rockets were interested in signing former Stanford standout Casey Jacobsen, and they made it happen on Tuesday. Click here for the story.

The Rockets also signed another Stanford guy, Matt Haryasz, who was somewhat impressive in a few games at the Vegas Summer League in July. He probably won’t make the team because the Rockets drafted a similar but better player — Steve Novak (click here for a YaoMania! interview) — before Haryasz, but he should get some looks during training camp.