Tomorrow night we will learn for sure if the Rockets will have one of the luckiest pulls in franchise history, or if they'll resign themselves to picking at the end of the lottery again. Houston will in all likelihood wind up with the 14th overall pick in this year's draft. The odds of them leaping up into the top three are 1.8%, and the odds of them getting up to the No. 1 overall pick would be an even slimmer 0.5%.
The Rockets will likely pick the best player available at fourteen, but their biggest need is in the post right now. Yao Ming's return is still questionable and the only other center with height on the roster, Hasheem Thabeet, is pretty well universally regarded as a bust. They have a host of decent players at the other four positions on the court.
Should the Rockets move into the Top 3, they'd likely to move select Enes Kanter, who wasn't allowed to play at Kentucky last season because the NCAA is a completely asinine organization. Derrick Williams would also make some sense, especially as a package move to deal Luis Scola, who is by far the oldest player in the Rockets regular rotation, for a center.
The Rockets have had some lotto luck in the past: they moved up to the No. 1 overall pick (that they used to select Ming) in the 2002 NBA Draft. They had just an 8.9% chance of winning it that year.