My personal feeling is that this years team will be better than last year's...but...last year we avoided serious injuries to our core (Oden aside), and I suspect that some core guys will miss chunks of time. Also, there is going to be an adjustment period to Miller & the new improved Oden. Last, I think some of the Western bottom feeders are improved which means we may lose a couple of the gimme games from last year...
The measure of this team for me is now the playoffs, not the regular season.