As insidethegames revealed exclusively on Tuesday, Finch is leaving his post at Dexia Mons-Hainaut in Belgium to take up the role of head coach of the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, who play in the NBA Development Basketball League (NDBL) and the feeder team to the NBA's Houston Rockets.

Finch has combined club and international duty since 2006, in which time he has guided Great Britain to Division A and most recently their first European Championships, where they were seeded in a group which produced the winners, runners-up and fourth placed team.

He said: "They [Rockets] first reached out to me after the summer league and if I would be interested working within the organisation, especially coach of the D-League team which is a team they have just taken over the basketball operations of.

"In the D-League there are independent organisations and then those controlled by the NBA teams and that was an interesting quality the Vipers had.

"The role brings certain advantages to GB.

"It clears the way on either side of the GB schedule to properly prepare and digest what's gone on.

"It will also help me be able to establish relationships with the likes of Ben Gordon and improve those with Luol [Deng] and Pops Mensah-Bonsu, Pops in particular because he's within the same organisation as me.

"Then it also that gives me the time to get on a plane and come over in the spring and spend maybe two weeks seeing our guys play in Europe.

"I haven't been able to do that as much as I would have liked to as my schedule has previously been challenging.
 

"The Rockets are committed to me developing and that's important."

Finch also impressed the importance of broadening his basketball portfolio, which has so far been dominated by European action.
 

He said: "I have been in Europe for 16 years and will of course stay ontop of the game, but moving to the States allows more access to field experts on that side of the Pond who I've not met or have been working with for a while.
 

"I have always said that GB's style of play is a hybrid of European and North American ball and ironically that's what the Rockets were looking for."

Finch will join his GB assistant coach, Nick Nurse, in the States as Nurse is the head coach of D-League side Iowa Energy.

The pair are set to go head-to-head on January 9 when Iowa hosts the Vipers.

Finch said: "I seem to be on the same path as Nick but several years behind him. Nick has been great throughout this whole process from both a GB and personal level.

"I asked a lot of questions about life in the D-League and he was very encouraging."

Chris Spice, the Performance Director of British Basketball, claimed Finch's decision to move the US would not affect his role in this country.

He said: "As far as we, British Basketball, are concerned it's business as usual with regards to Chris and his position as the head coach of Great Britain.

"We are working with him to see how his new job may alter the way we do things, but there is no doubt that it is possible for him to continue to be both a club and international coach, as he has done for the past three years.

"Chris has been a key part of the progress the GB men have made and we hope that this new chapter in his coaching career will in turn prove beneficial to British Basketball."


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September 2009: Exclusive - British basketball coach to return to US to work with Houston Rockets