Baskonia Stars Blast Vitoria's Worst Journalist

This is a local media fight wrapped around a basketball club. The club is Baskonia. The journalist at the center is Radio Vitoria’s Ricardo Guerra. And the reason it blew up is simple — he went on an online talk show, made two concrete claims about the team, and Baskonia hit back in public, hard. (nortexpres.com) ### What kicked this off? The trigger was a web discussion where Guerra said two things: he gave a figure for Chris Chiozza’s salary, and he described Baskonia’s locker room as “quite fractured.” Those were not vague opinions. They were presented as information. That matters, because once you move from commentary to specifics, the club can answer point by point. (nortexpres.com) ### Why did Baskonia react so sharply? Baskonia’s response was unusually direct. The club said the salary amounts being circulated were false and also rejected the idea of a broken dressing room. Basically, the club treated the comments not as tough coverage but as misinformation. In a sports town like Vitoria-Gasteiz, that is gasoline on a fire — because access, trust, and reputation all sit on top of those relationships. (nortexpres.com) ### Who are “Epi y Blas” here? That phrase comes from the Norte Exprés framing, not from some official Baskonia role. It is a mocking local shorthand — a “Bert and Ernie” style label — used in the piece to describe the figures involved in publicly schooling the journalist. The article is openly polemical. It is not trying to sound neutral. That tone is part of the story, because the fight is as much about local media culture as it is about Baskonia itself. (nortexpres.com) ### Did Guerra back down? Yes. Norte Exprés says Guerra ended up apologizing. And that apology is the hinge of the whole episode. If the underlying claims had held up, there would be no need to retract or soften them. That is why the outlet leans so hard on the apology — it uses it as proof that the original reporting missed. (nortexpres.com)ive about it? Because this is not just a recap. It is a vendetta-style media critique. The piece calls Guerra the worst journalist in Vitoria and folds the Baskonia dispute into a bigger complaint about rumor, sloppiness, and what it portrays as a local “mud machine.” Turns out the article is really doing two jobs at once — defending Baskonia on this specific dispute and attacking a broader style of sports talk in the city. (nortexpres.com) ### Is there a bigger pattern here? Yes — tension between clubs and local media gets hottest when reporting crosses from analysis into unverifiable insider claims. A coach can survive criticism. A front office can shrug off a bad opinion. But salary numbers and locker-room fracture stories are different. Those claims imply sourcing, access, and backstage knowled(nortexpres.com)s. That last point is an inference from the public dispute and apology, not a formally stated club strategy. (nortexpres.com) ### Why did this resonate in Vitoria? Because Baskonia is not just another team there. It is one of the city’s core institutions. So a fight over whether someone spread false details about the roster or the dressing room lands as more than gossip — it becomes a fight over who gets to define reality around one of Vitoria’s biggest public symbols. (baskonia.com)reed. That happens every week. The story is that the disagreement turned into a public credibility test, and on the facts that triggered it — Chiozza’s salary and the “fractured” locker room — Baskonia came out swinging, and the journalist apologized. In local sports media, that is about as clear a loss as it gets. (nortexpres.com)r-periodista-de-vitoria/))