Upon receiving a buyout from the Knicks, Stephon Marbury received an aggressive sales pitch from Dwyane Wade and Pat Riley to sign with the Miami Heat.

"I just felt like that the direction I wanted to go in, winning a championship was important," Marbury said. "I knew that there was an interest for a while [in Miami]. It wasn't something that came about at the last minute when there was talks about me getting out of my deal. Before I was able to get out of my deal, they were interested."

"We've always had a relationship," said Wade. "I wasn't playing GM. We talked about a lot of different things. Of course, we all knew that Boston was a strong thing."

Said Marbury, "We spoke. I told him it was more about business than anything. That was really it. We spoke about the possibility of coming [to Miami]."