The media only gets about 30 minutes to watch the end of practice, so it’s hard to pick up too much in that amount of time. But here are my observations, along with comments from P.J. Carlesimo, which you can listen to in full here.

Carlesimo said the team worked about 60 percent on defense and the rest on offense during the two-and-a-half hour practice.

“They worked hard,” Carlesimo said. “They bought into what we were trying to do and their enthusiasm was very good.

“If we practice like we practiced today we’re gong to be a good team. But it’s also the first practice. I’ve got to think if you go around the league 30 teams had good practices.”

The team will practice twice today (Tuesday) and Wednesday, once Thursday and twice on Friday and Saturday. The second practice on Saturday includes the practice open to the public at Seattle Pacific University.

During the last part of practice the team worked on running the offensive break and secondary offense out of the break during the first 10 minutes, with assistant coach Paul Westhead leading them through the drill. Westhead took time to make sure players were getting to the right spots and in the right running lanes.

After that, P.J. ran the team through a 5-on-5 full-court drill with a focus on getting back on defense and matching up. Here we got to see the team scrimmage a little bit. Kevin Durant and Jeff Green both looked impressive running the floor. In particular, Green did a nice job of getting to the basket, moving with a fluidity that belies his 6-foot-9, 235-pound frame.

No surprise here, but Wally Szczerbiak can still stoke it. He drained several open jumpers during the 5-on-5 drill and got good lift on his shots. He seems to have recovered nicely from off-season ankle surgery.

Robert Swift seemed to be laboring at the end of practice, struggling to get up and down the floor during fast-break drills. That’s to be expected. He’s still less-than a year out from off-season knee surgery and will need some time to get into game shape. And he’s carrying another 40 pounds, which makes it harder for him to get up and down the floor.

With that said, Swift still moved well around the basket and had decent lift. But I think the Sonics will ease him into the season and try not to push him too hard in order to avoid Swift reinjuring the knee.

Carlesimo divided the team into three squads during these drills, but he made it clear after practice that there were no specific reasons for the groupings.

“Each team had five guys on it, and they had a couple big guys and a couple small guys,” Carlesimo deadpanned. “One of the teams was red, one of the teams was green, and one of the teams was white. If you go anything beyond that you would be extrapolating.”

I’ll give you the groupings anyway.

The red squad consisted of Delonte West, Jeff Green, Mouhamed Sene, Nick Collison and Damien Wilkins. On the white squad included Kevin Durant, Kurt Thomas, Mickael Gelabale, Johan Petro and Earl Watson. And the green squad consisted of Szczerbiak, Luke Ridnour, Jermaine Jackson, Robert Swift and Chris Wilcox.

I’m writing a feature on Delonte West for tomorrow’s paper. P.J. likes West’s intensity and ability to pressure the ball defensively — particularly West’s ability to block shots from the guard spot and harass smaller point guards. Expect West’s ability to play both the point and shooting guard to get him minutes on the floor. Listen to a conversation with West from media day here.

That’s all for now.