NBA Draft 2021: San Antonio Spurs select Iowa's Joe Wieskamp in the second round

Throughout his junior season of college basketball, Joe Wieskamp knew that it would be his last at the University of Iowa.

"My mindset the whole time was, ‘I’m ready to do this thing. I’m ready to take the next step,'" Wieskamp told the Register recently. "I feel like that’s the mindset you have to have."

That determination and a strong preparation for the pros has paid off. Wieskamp was selected in the second round of Thursday's NBA Draft by the San Antonio Spurs, with the No. 41 overall pick. Of the 12 individual workouts Wieskamp conducted since the NBA Combine, one was with San Antonio. The Spurs also drafted Alabama 6-foot-6 guard Josh Primo in the first round with the No. 12 overall pick.

Wieskamp, 21, becomes the highest-drafted Hawkeye since Ricky Davis went No. 21 overall in 1998. (Adam Haluska went No. 43 overall in the 2007 draft.)

Last year's No. 41 overall pick, Tre Jones of Duke, wound up signing a three-year, $4.2 million deal — also with the Spurs with $2.4 million being guaranteed. 

The 6-foot-7, 204-pound wing player (with 4% body fat) who earned second-team all-Big Ten Conference honors last season is now a pro basketball player at the highest level.

Wieskamp’s outside game and versatility made him a more attractive draft pick than teammate Luka Garza, the consensus national player of the year. Wieskamp was the only Division I player last season with 400 points, 200 rebounds, 70 3-pointers and 25 steals.

His athleticism especially stood out at the NBA Combine in late June, when he soared 42 inches in the max-vertical jump — tied for the fourth-highest mark of all 50-plus players who tested in Chicago. So did his outside game, which has always been tremendous but elevated to a new level this past year when he connected on at least five 3-pointers in six different games. The Muscatine native shot 46.2% from 3-point range as a junior. Then at the Combine, he buried 6-of-7 3-pointers for 26 points in one of his two five-on-five games. From there, his stock rose and he was deemed to be a potential early-second round pick.

And that's exactly how it panned out.