<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Petteri Koponen was supposed to be in Portland last Monday, fielding questions with his teammates on the Blazers' media day.</p> Instead, the 19-year-old first-round pick in the 2007 draft found himself in the barracks of Hame regiment in southern Finland, enrolling for a six-month stint in the Finnish army.</p> Koponen has not discarded his NBA dreams for a career in the military. He is doing what all Finnish men are obligated to do: participating in military training. After all, this is a country that shares a 600-mile border with Russia and has gone through enough wars with its giant eastern neighbor to be on guard.</p> There are no military exceptions made for professional athletes, although there are some privileges. Koponen will serve in the special sports troops, where the 6-foot-4 point guard will have plenty of time to train and play for Honka, his team in the semi-professional Finnish basketball championship.</p> Of the 180 days Koponen is supposed to serve, barely half will be spent in the barracks where he shares a room with 11 other soldier-athletes, including tennis pro Jarkko Nieminen, ranked 26th in the world.</p> "After I was drafted, my first priority was to play in the NBA this season. But when it became clear that I would stay in Finland for one more year, I began to seek an opportunity to do my military service," Koponen explained to the media horde that followed him on his first day in camouflage.</p> "We have already drawn a day-by-day plan for Koponen to ensure that his basketball will not suffer during the military service," said Lieutenant Colonel Jouni Lipponen, the head of the sports troops.</p> The Philadelphia 76ers drafted Koponen as the final pick of the first round in June's draft. But he was immediately traded to Portland for the 42nd pick and money.</p> The frenzied Finnish media were ready to declare Koponen the country's second NBA player (the first was Hanno Mottola, who played two seasons for the Atlanta Hawks), but Portland preferred to let him mature in Europe.</p> "The big thing for him is that he's a 19-year-old point guard and he's just learning how to play, learning how to play at a higher level than he's had," Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard said. "Obviously, Finland is not the mecca for basketball players, but he's just got to play. His team's gotten better, and I think they're going to be in some bigger tournaments this year. So he'll get better competition."</div></p> Source: Oregon Live</p>
