Climbing the draft ladder is a real workout. (Insider: NBA).

Marcus Haislip usually does not go to bed early, but he knew he had to give it a shot. It was May 21, and Haislip was preparing for his workout with the Clippers, which was to begin at 10:30 a.m. at the University of Southern California the next day. He tucked himself into bed by 10 p.m. and waited.

"It's hard to sleep because you are a little nervous," he says. "But the last thing in the world you want to do is show up tired."

Such is the life of a prospect in the weeks before the draft. Players generally go through anywhere from five to 15 workouts, and though a player's high school, college or foreign career certainly is important in NBA teams' evaluations of players, it's the workouts that make or break draft position.

Haislip took TSN inside one week of workouts, starting with the Clippers.

May 22, Los Angeles. Haislip showed up for his workout with the Clippers at 10:30 a.m., accompanied by three other players: Jared Jeffries, Tamar Slay and Vincent Yarbrough, Haislip's teammate at Tennessee. The Clippers, Haislip says, were most interested in evaluating the players' basic basketball skills, which meant about two hours' worth of drills. "I had hyped myself out," he says. "I thought it would be more strenuous than it was."

The players were put through basic 2-on-2 and pick-and-roll drills, but Haislip, whose atleticism is his strength, excelled most in the rebounding drills. In one, Haislip began with his back to the basket and had to turn around, catch the rebound and dunk. He added some flair, even windmilling one dunk. In another drill, Clippers coaches tossed balls off a spot on the backboard and asked Haislip to leap to catch them. He still was catching rebounds when the coaches were throwing balls at the top of the square.

"The kid," says one scout who was at the workout, "is an ath-lete."