NEW YORK - Some NBA personnel have been fined for making it too obvious they were talking about Greg Oden.

Perhaps they could take a lesson from David Stern.

The NBA commissioner talked around, though certainly seemed to be talking about, the Ohio State freshman All-American on Wednesday during his annual pre-playoffs conference call.

Stern had earlier trumpeted the success of the league’s age requirement rule, which forces U.S. players to be 19 and a year out of high school before they are eligible for the draft.

Asked later if the rule was the reason there seemed to be such anticipation of this year’s draft, and Stern said the buzz comes from the quality of player that is in it.

“It happens that this year there’s sort of a double-up year because of the presence of players who otherwise might have come last year, and apparently some of the ones up for consideration have done quite well in college and they’re doing very well in the eyes of people evaluating talent,” Stern said.

Oden almost certainly would have been the No. 1 pick last year out of high school had it not been for the age requirement rule. He has until April 29 to declare if he will be in this year’s draft. Listening to Stern, it seems he expects to be calling Oden’s name two months later in New York.

“We are going to have a lot of the attention and the hype ... because there are going to be a lot of good players in this draft and a lot of them are going to be very tall,” Stern said. “So we’ve got a lot of teams thinking that they’ve got a selection to make that’s going to be that decade-long choice.”

Gee, Oden happens to be 7 feet tall and considered a franchise-altering player.

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“I don’t want to make a statement for the ages, but I am hearing people say with respect to this year that this may be the No. 1 or 2 draft of all time,” Stern said.

Oden would need to be in it for this draft to meet any lofty expectations of being the best ever. It got halfway there Tuesday when Kevin Durant, the college player of the year, announced he was leaving Texas after one year.

That also freed up league personnel to start talking about him without fear of penalty. Already, Don Nelson and Michael Jordan had been fined, with reports that Byron Scott and Gregg Popovich had as well, for making obvious references to the freshmen stars before they were draft eligible.

Stern also said he was pleased with the Portland ownership and arena situation, reiterated the return of the Hornets to New Orleans was a certainty, and didn’t rule out the NBA being back in Oklahoma City someday. He wouldn’t discuss Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman’s proposal to bring a franchise to his city, saying only that it would be on the agenda at next week’s Board of Governors meeting.

As for basketball matters, there are no plans to change the way teams are seeded in the playoffs. Because division winners are guaranteed a top-four seed, a third-place team in a division could fall to No. 5, even with a better record. The current No. 5 seeds, Cleveland and Houston, both have better records than a division leader, so they would at least get home-court advantage in the first round.

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Executive vice president Stu Jackson said the league hasn’t received complaints about the length of the season or amount of back-to-back games, even though Denver coach George Karl and the Lakers’ Phil Jackson have mentioned them as a concern during a season of numerous injuries.

And Stern had no problem with a promotion in Chicago that caused some anger Tuesday night after the Bulls’ 98-69 victory over the Knicks. A few New York players thought the Bulls were trying too hard to score two more points, which would have meant free Big Macs to every fan in attendance.

“I think we’ve lowered the threshold in some cases, we should try to make the scoring higher to get the award,” Stern said. “It’s been as a subject for about 20 years as I can recall it. It used to be about fries, now it’s about the whole Mac. I’m not going to have an opinion other than to say it’s here and there are no rules against it and our players shouldn’t complain about it.”