{"id":153672,"date":"2025-11-25T23:11:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/153672\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T23:11:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T23:11:04","slug":"key-nz-football-personnel-meet-sean-marks-to-establish-connections-ahead-of-2026-fifa-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/153672\/","title":{"rendered":"Key NZ Football personnel meet Sean Marks to establish connections ahead of 2026 Fifa World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sPFaqtujRFrTgah\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWhen we knew we were going to be in New York with the All Whites and connecting with key stakeholders in preparation of next year\u2019s World Cup, it presented a great opportunity to meet with Sean who is operating at the very top of the game in one of the world\u2019s biggest sporting leagues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sPFaqtujRFrTgah\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cIt was incredible to be shown around their training facility to see all of the aspects that go into producing an elite professional basketball team. It was a great and educational experience as we continue to strive to deliver a best in class set up for our own high performance teams.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img  alt=\"Ryan Nelsen with Andrew Pragnell and Sean Marks. Photo \/ Supplied\" class=\"article-media__image responsively-lazy\" data-test-ui=\"article-media__image\"\/>Ryan Nelsen with Andrew Pragnell and Sean Marks. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n<p class=\"sPFaqtujRFrTgah\" style=\"display:none\">Marks is arguably the most successful basketball player to come from New Zealand. He was the first New Zealand-born player to play in the NBA and part of the Tall Blacks team that finished fourth at the 2002 world champs. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sPFaqtujRFrTgah\" style=\"display:none\">While his role in the NBA was minor on the court, he was part of the 2005 NBA-champion San Antonio Spurs team, while he added another title in 2014 while serving as an assistant coach to the team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sPFaqtujRFrTgah\" style=\"display:none\">He has been the GM of the Nets since 2016.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sPFaqtujRFrTgah\" style=\"display:none\">In addition to visiting the Nets\u2019 facilities, Pragnell and Nelsen met with key stakeholders involved in planning next year\u2019s World Cup. They also spoke at a \u2018flat white meet up\u2019 at Rodd &amp; Gunn store in the city, to connect with Kiwi entrepreneurs and business people in New York.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sPFaqtujRFrTgah\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/ben-francis\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/ben-francis\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Francis<\/a> is an Auckland-based reporter for the New Zealand Herald who covers breaking sports news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen we knew we were going to be in New York with the All Whites and connecting with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,3017,26568,2199,33658,95457,10542,40142,36862,5213,3218,4277,194,685,3223,22638,9862,2374,102261,111,43,139,69,1118,102260,2341,6747,5128,3546,46453,61,686,5264,102,377,2173,80],"class_list":["post-153672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-ahead","tag-basketball","tag-city","tag-connections","tag-crossed","tag-cup","tag-establish","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-icon","tag-key","tag-kiwi","tag-last","tag-legend","tag-marks","tag-meet","tag-meeting","tag-nelsen","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-paths","tag-personnel","tag-royalty","tag-ryan","tag-sean","tag-sporting","tag-to","tag-week","tag-whites","tag-with","tag-world","tag-york","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}