By Mike Fisher -- DallasBasketball.com
      Why is Steve Nash “huddling’’ over dinner with Blazers execs?
      Hoo boy, what a scoop! The Portland Oregonian breathlessly reported over the weekend that the Mavs’ free-agent guard dined Saturday in Portland with Blazers coach Mo Cheeks and team president Steve Patterson.
      The paper was so excited about the story that it actually wrote a story reviewing its own story! The review from Saturday:
      The Oregonian's Jonathan Nicholas writes Mavs' PG Steve Nash was seen in Portland huddling with Mo Cheeks and Steve Patterson over steaks at El Goucho:
      And the original story from last Wednesday:
      At the steakhouse earlier Saturday, Blazers coach Mo Cheeks upped the steaks with two Steves: Mavericks point guard Nash and Blazers boss Patterson. Table-watchers report "serious faces" and "much huddling."
      Yikes! Huddling! Serious faces!
      The paper went on:
      Nash opted out the final year of his contract the day after the season ended, making him an unrestricted free agent.
      And because the Mavs already have four players signed to max contracts (Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Finley, Antoine Walker and Antawn Jamison), people around Dallas are wondering if they can afford to ink another long term, maxed-out contract.
      The Blazers can't offer any more than the mid-level exception to Nash, which was around $4.7 million last season. He could garner more money if the two teams worked out a sign-and-trade deal.
      Contract negotiations with free agents can officially begin on July 1.
      But there's nothing wrong with a few guys getting together for dinner, right?
      Good gosh! The Oregonian walks us through the Mavs’ issues with max contracts, works to figure out a way that Nash would take about a third of what he’s worth to play there, and then even attempts to help out the local team by noting that while negotiations can’t begin yet, there is nothing illegal about sharing a steak.
      Oh, and what the Portland paper forgets to mention: Steve is a Pacific Northwest kind of guy. … so this would be even more of a homecoming than a move to Toronto!
      The Oregonian’s “table-watchers’’ are EVERYWHERE!
      Wait a minute. There’s a problem.
      As the Oregonian wrote over the weekend – in its THIRD mention of the Nash dinner in five days’ time:
      Blazers President Steve Patterson, general manager John Nash and coach Maurice Cheeks met for dinner Saturday night at El Gaucho Restaurant in Portland. An item in Jonathan Nicholas' column in Living on Wednesday incorrectly identified John Nash as Dallas Mavericks guard Steve Nash.
     Oh. JOHN Nash? The Portland team’s OWN general manager? The Oregonian’s “table-watchers’’ didn’t know Dallas’ Steve Nash from their own city’s Blazers GM?!
     Understand, this would be akin to the Dallas Morning News reporting that Cuban and Nelson were spotted secretly huddling at Hotel ZaZa with Grant Hill. … only to later report that it wasn’t “Grant” as in “Hill” but rather “Grant’’ as in “Keith.’’ You know, Keith Grant, the long-time Mavs assistant GM, who I suppose, in a really dark restaurant, could be mistaken for the Magic’s Grant Hill.
      Maybe most disturbing of all is the Oregonian’s rather flip handling of the retraction. On the paper’s website is a headline that reads, “John? Steve? Whatever.’’ And then comes a line, “D'oh! The forum was hopping yesterday with talk of this rumor, but it now appears to have been nothing more than a mistake.’’
      Yeah, it kind of appears that way. Unless there is yet another retraction to come, that the John Nash that dined with Blazers officials that night wasn’t the GM John Nash at all, but was instead the Nobel Prize winner John Nash from “A Beautiful Mind.’’