Rockets GM Carroll Dawson is set to meet with representatives for Chinese center Yao Ming Thursday, the Houston Chronicle is reporting.  The meeting, which will take place face to face, could decide if the Rockets are willing to take a chance on the 7-5 center with the first overall pick in the upcoming NBA draft.

"They know they are here for one reason, and that's because we have that first pick," Dawson said. "We're very interested. That's why you invite people down, to show you're interested.?

"You go through a process. They had a lot of questions to ask us. We had a lot of questions to ask them. It went very well."

"It's not important at this point that we reach an agreement, what's important now is just to know who we are dealing with," said John Huizinga, one of Ming?s representatives.

"It would be like having the Michael Jordan of China playing in Houston," added Gordon Quan, a City Councilman in Houston that services the Asian community, of the possibility of the Rockets drafting Yao with the top pick. "He can revolutionize this team the same way Hakeem first did when he came out of college."