Lighter travel load has Kerr grateful

Last month, when the Warriors announced their preseason schedule, head coach Steve Kerr was pleased that his team wouldn’t have another travel-heavy slate.

A year after playing two exhibitions in China, Golden State’s only road preseason games are in Seattle, Las Vegas and San Jose. That travel schedule will allow players to establish some sort of routine entering the regular season.

“I just think there’s a sense of comfort and ease, and I don’t mean that in terms of practices are easy,” Kerr said before Saturday evening’s preseason opener against Minnesota. “This is the way you’re supposed to enter a season. You have a solid couple of weeks of conditioning and not too much travel. You really get to put things in piece by piece, day by day.”

That was hardly the case last year, when the Warriors spent much of preseason nearly 7,000 miles from home. A weeklong tour of China took its toll. Though Golden State built relationships — with fans, as well as companies — in the NBA’s largest international market, it managed only two practices there.

It also didn’t help that, thanks to the jet lag that comes with a 15-hour time change, many players slept in only one- or twohour intervals upon returning to the Bay Area. After touching down in Oakland on a Sunday night, the team took Monday off. Its practice was cut short Tuesday because players were still exhausted.

After a low-energy — albeit, much longer — practice Wednesday, the Warriors were finally beginning to put in meaningful work at practice. Such an energy-draining preseason bled into Golden State’s regular-season performance. The Warriors’ lethargic start resulted in a 10-5 record. “This is a much more natural way to prepare for the year,” Kerr said of this year’s preseason schedule. “And I’m not disparaging international travel because international travel is an important way to grow the game. I’m glad we took part in that, but there’s a reason they spread the teams around and the same teams don’t go overseas every year.

“It’s not easy. I think for our guys, especially since we’ve been to the Finals four years in a row, it’s a huge relief to be staying here.”

Butler absence: On the official team lineups handed to media, Timberwolves guard Jimmy Butler was listed as out because of offseason surgery on his right wrist. Anyone who has followed the NBA in recent days, however, knows that Butler has not been with the team since demanding a trade.

Tom Thibodeau, Minnesota’s head coach and president of basketball operations, is forced to prepare his team for the season while trying to trade arguably his best player. It is double-duty that Kerr — the general manager of Phoenix before he took over as head coach of the Warriors — does not envy.

“Having sat in both chairs, I would not be comfortable doing both jobs,” Kerr said.

Connor Letourneau is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.