Somewhat expected with only 15 players in camp, the injury bug has bit the Seattle Sonics.

Kurt Thomas, Robert Swift and Delonte West all spent time on the sidelines during Thursday morning’s practice, the only practice of the day for the team.

Thomas suffered a contusion to his left quad, catching a knee to his leg on Wednesday. Swift has tendinitis in his surgically repaired right knee from the daily grind of practicing for the first time. And West is still suffering from a sprained ankle he suffered on Tuesday, and also got his left big toe nail removed, which was caused by breaking in some uncomfortable tennis shoes.

Mickael Gelabale also is hobbled by a sore hip from taking a hard fall when he tried to dunk over someone on the first day of practice. But Gelabale practiced on Thursday.

Coach P.J. Carlesimo knew he was taking a calculated risk in only inviting 15 players to camp. And after three days of pushing his players hard, he’ll now have to ease back a bit to avoid any further injuries. Listen to Carlesimo’s full conversation here.

Carlesimo said he didn’t invite more players to camp because he wanted to have time to work with the guys he knew were going to be on the team. The flip side of that is when your numbers get small it’s hard to get a decent look during 5-on-5 scrimmages. But Carlesimo said by easing back and letting some of those guys get healthy the team should be able to limp through until the team's open public practice on Saturday.

“We’re kind of right on the edge of pushing to hard and you start to get injuries,” Carlesimo said.
“But I think we’ll be able to get to Saturday night with what we have, unless somebody else comes up lame tomorrow. If we get Robert or Kurt back, that will get us through tomorrow. If we don’t we’ll just have to be a little more conservative tomorrow to get through Saturday.”

Carlesimo said he may keep 15 players, which bodes well for Jermaine Jackson, the only player with a non-guaranteed contract. Jackson can play the one or the two, and adds more versatility to the backcourt.

However, the 31-year-old Jackson, who has played for five different teams, said he’s not worried about the numbers game and is more focused on doing what he can to improve the team. Listen to an interview with Jackson from media day here.

Orginally the Sonics were scheduled to go two, 10-minute quarters, but Carlesimo cut that to one 10-minute quarter with the injuries. As far as how the team looked during the scrimmage, the white team beat the green team handily.

The fact that the white team was more dominant isn’t surprising. They had a more veteran squad, with Earl Watson, Jermaine Jackson, Mouhamed Sene, Damien Wilkins, Nick Collison and Michael Gelabale. The Green team consisted of rookies Jeff Green and Kevin Durant along with Luke Ridnour, Wally Szczerbiak, Chris Wilcox and Johan Petro.

Nobody really stood out in the scrimmage expect for Gelabale, who seemed a bit reserved the first few days but did a nice job of going hard to the basket during the scrimmage.

The most interesting thing is it appears the Sonics might play a lot of zone, really focusing on protecting the basket and forcing teams into uncomfortable shots. From there, Seattle will look to push the ball for easy baskets.

It makes sense. Since the Sonics will be young and don’t have a lot of continuity with all of the new faces, the hardest thing to do is develop a rhythm in a half-court offensive set. So the Sonics will probably look to get as many easy buckets in transition as they can get.

That’s all for now.