Not much gained for Yi playing with Team China

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There's nothing like studying top draft picks in decent competition from the 2nd row at midcourt. You just can't witness naunces from a TV screen -- or worse, a laptop monitor -- like you can this close to the players. I went to Vegas last week to catch two games live of Yi Jianlian and the Chinese National Team. ESPN.com's Chad Ford had Yi ranked right behind Greg Oden and Kevin Durant for the 2007 NBA Draft, and Yi looked pretty good as a mobile 7-footer with skills in pre-draft workouts.

After watching a multitude of various summer league 7-footers, of which Spencer Hawes was probably the most skilled, you could see from the ESPN pre-draft workout clip that Yi really does have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the Chinese National Team is doing almost nothing to tap that potential...

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