The Sonics practiced for about two hours today. And in an unusual move, Sonics coach P.J. Carlesimo said the team will work for an hour before the game at Sacramento on Tuesday. For the next two weeks that will be the routine before preseason games.

The shootarounds will be more like mini-practices so the coaching staff can get more work in, Carlesimo said.

Only about 10 or 11 members of the team will play against Sacramento, but Carlesimo said he won’t decide on a rotation until an hour or two before game time.

Carlesimo said part of his decision not to play certain players could be related to sitting them out in order to let them rest nagging injuries. I imagine veterans like Kurt Thomas and Wally Szczerbiak could fit that description.

“Certainly as we get closer to Denver and Phoenix we’ve got to tighten the rotation,” Carlesimo said. “We’ve got to figure who we’re going to start, we’ve got to figure out rotations and we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to play. But at this stage it’s just a lot of evaluating of personnel, and a lot of evaluating of what we put in so far.

“There’s a couple of areas tomorrow night where we will probably get exposed in and we’ll talk about it after the game because we haven’t put it in. We can’t expect them to do something if we haven’t even put it in on the floor. But the things we have covered I hope we see carry over to tomorrow night. The things that aren’t in, I’m not concerned about.”

Listen to the full conversation with Carlesimo here.

All 15 players practiced on Monday. We saw about the last 20 minutes of practice. The team worked on offensive sets against air for about five minutes, then they went 5-on-5 fullcourt working on zone defensive rotations and getting back defensively.

The Sonics finished the session off with a perimeter shooting drill and free throws.

Nick Collison and Mickel Gelabale missed free throws at the end of practice so the team had to run a set of lines. And the team then ran some more as Gelabale missed two in a row before finally draining a shot from the line to end practice.

During the foul shooting drill assistant coach Paul Westhead, Damien Wilkins and Chris Wilcox talked about an athletic, up-and-under move Wilkins attempted that just lipped out during he scrimmage. Westhead said the move reminded him of Julius Erving’s famous up and under move against Los Angeles Lakers’ defender Mark Landesberger that’s been replayed over and over throughout the years.

The three talked about the athleticism it took to perform the famous feat, then Westhead sprung this on him — he was coaching the Lakers in Game 4 of the 1980 NBA finals when Erving made the famous, spectacular play. Wilcox’s jaw dropped on hearing that news, and Wilkins chuckled.

Wilcox wasn’t born and Wilkins was just months old when Westhead won the NBA championship with the Lakers.

Here’s the play as part of a short Dr. J montage for those who don’t remember.

With the focus on conditioning and running this past week, the guys seem pretty excited to finally play a game, even though it’s preseason. Specifically, Kevin Durant said he’s ready to see his first NBA action.

“I just want to get acquainted with the NBA game, and how quick it is,” Durant said. “And like I’ve been saying for awhile I just want to help my team as much as possible and get better.”

Luke Ridnour, who looked good in the scrimmage on Saturday, said he’s feels comfortable with Carlesimo’s defensive-minded, up-tempo philosophy. Luke had 11 points in the scrimmage, and seems to be developing some chemistry with rookie Jeff Green.

“It’s exciting just because you get to go up and down,” Ridnour said. “So there’s freedom in that, and everyone’s running hard. So if we just do that and get up and down we’re going to be a team that’s making a lot of stuff happening.”

Listen to the full conversation with Ridnour here.

I’ll have some pre-game notes before the Sacramento game on Tuesday, and I’ll be blogging throughout the game.

The game against Sacramento won’t be shown on TV locally. Seattle’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday, Oct. 18 in Bakersfield is the only Sonics preseason game that will be televised. That game will be on TNT at 7:00 p.m.

Let me know some of your questions and concerns before game time and I’ll try to address them tonight or tomorrow.