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Before beginning practice, Sonics captains and All-Stars Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis removed a covering to reveal the Sonics 2004-05 Northwest Division Championship banner, which will now hang on the south wall of The Furtado Center, the Sonics and Storm training facility.

"It hangs there until we get a better one," quipped Sonics Coach Bob Weiss after practice.

" I loved today. I felt we got a lot accomplished." Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

That goal began today, as the Sonics practiced for the first time under Weiss, who is replacing Nate McMillan on the sidelines. Weiss was pleased with what his team accomplished in a session that went two and a half hours.

"I loved today," said Weiss. "I felt we got a lot accomplished. The two main points of emphasis - running and defense - we got well established and we're on our way with that. We ran several defensive drills. We had me talking, we had Bob (Hill) talking, we had Brendan (Malone) talking. Everybody was involved in it. That's something we're going to stay on top of every day."

Asked what he thought were negatives from the first practice, Weiss couldn't come up with anything. On the contrary, he had plenty of positives.

"I really liked the focus they brought, the effort they gave us and I liked the skill level," said Weiss. "I thought we got accomplished what we were focusing on. They did a good job of picking up the defensive stuff and I think they're getting a feel for the type of running and getting out we want to do."

Weiss was also mostly pleased with his team's conditioning.

"I thought it was pretty good," he said. "We've got a couple of guys who are dinged up a little bit. We've got a couple of guys who aren't there yet. We've got other guys who are in mid-season form. You've kind of got a conglomerate. We'll get there."

Likewise, Lewis was pleased with what he saw from his new coach.

"The only (different) thing today was that he talked a little bit more than he did when he wasn't the head guy," said Lewis. "Just my experience with him today, I think that we're going to have a good coach and we're going to have a good season."

At Media Day, Weiss explained one significant change in practice style he planned to implement was trying to do more teaching at the beginning of practice, keeping him from having to interrupt the active part of practice to teach a new offensive or defensive set or concept. Allen found that a welcome change.

"Bob tried to explain himself as thoroughly as he could early in practice," said Allen. "We didn't do a lot of standing around; we just moved, got to certain drills, did what we had to do."

When media was allowed in for the last 45 minutes of practice, the Sonics were running full-court with three teams rotating on and off the court. The red team featured Nick Collison, Johan Petro, Roger Powell, Luke Ridnour, Alex Scales and Tre Simmons. Mateen Cleaves, Lewis, Mikki Moore, Ronald "Flip" Murray, Vitaly Potapenko and Vladimir Radmanovic formed the green squad. Playing for the white team were Allen, Rick Brunson, Noel Felix, Danny Fortson, Robert Swift, Damien Wilkins and Ezra Williams.

"Basically, everybody's mixed up," said Weiss. "There wasn't too much thought, except I'm trying to make the teams relatively even."

Later, Weiss split the team up into guards, forwards and centers to rotate through three stations manned by different assistant coaches and work on one-on-one drills designed to focus on defense. The practice concluded with players splitting up into four different teams for competitive shooting drills.

"Last year, we didn't shoot a lot, at least in practice," said Allen. "Even today, toward the end, he made sure guys tried to work on their individual stuff. I think that's going to fare well with guys like Swift, Johan, definitely Nick, Danny and hopefully Reggie.

"If we can get that guy off the pick-and-roll to knock down that consistent jumpshot, that gives us another dimension like we had when I first got here with (Peja) Drobnjak. Vitaly can knock that down a little bit, but we didn't work on that a lot with the bigs the last couple of years. Bob knows those guys are capable of doing that, so he's going to put more pressure on them to hit those shots."