NEWARK — Amid dark days in the NBA, a basketball legend is keeping alive a glimmer of hope for the future of hoops in Newark.

Retired star center Shaquille O’Neal said Thursday that talks are under way to bring a National Basketball Association franchise to his native city — the most definitive statement yet on a push to make Newark a professional basketball town. The news comes as the city braces to lose a season hosting the Nets during an increasingly intractable NBA lockout.

After angling to get out of the Izod Center in the Meadowlands for years, the Nets played at the Prudential Center in Newark last year and were to play at the Rock again this year before moving to Brooklyn next year.

"I would love to own an NBA team," O’Neal told Stephen A. Smith of ESPN’s SportsCenter. "Hopefully we can bring a team back to my hometown of Newark, New Jersey, and we have some talks going on now."

O’Neal, who was promoting his new book "Shaq Uncut: My Story," has previously discussed landing a team for Newark but his interview Thursday is the most serious indication yet the idea is more than talk.

"On at least two occasions, Shaq and I have talked and he was very serious about bringing an NBA team to the Prudential Center," said Jeff Vanderbeek, owner of the New Jersey Devils and the company that operates the 4-year-old arena. "We stand to help him in any way possible."

Mayor Cory Booker declined to offer specifics, but said he is involved in finding investors.

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"We are confident that Newark will be home to another NBA team after the Nets move to Brooklyn," Booker said in a statement. "In the meantime, we hope the NBA and its players union are able to swiftly resolve their differences so the games can go on."

The combined influences of O’Neal and Booker still have to clear some major hurdles. Chief among them is that the local market for basketball is already saturated.

"The main obstacle here is that the Nets and Mr. Prokhorov would not be very happy," said sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, referring to Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov. "They’re making an enormous investment in Brooklyn. They don’t want to share the New York market with a third team."

Knicks owner James Dolan would also likely object, Zimbalist said, and the two men have much more sway with the NBA than Booker and Shaq.

If a third team were allowed into the market, Zimbalist said, it would probably have to pay "tens of millions" of dollars in indemnification fees to compensate the Knicks and Nets for the loss in market share.

O’Neal grew up in Newark’s Central Ward and has invested in the city before with mixed success.

He was part of a $90 million, 25-story high rise on the site of the old Science High School on Rector Street announced more than five years ago that never got off the ground.

In March, O’Neal announced that a $7 million renovation of Newark Screens, the city’s last remaining movie theater, would go through after two years.