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As if the Charlotte Bobcats' 33-point season-opening loss at Boston Wednesday night wasn't bad enough, they had trouble getting away from it.
The bus scheduled to take the Bobcats to the airport wouldn't start, forcing the team to wait an additional 45 minutes before they could leave the TD Garden and put some distance between themselves and their opening-night flop.
"We deserved that," coach Larry Brown said Thursday afternoon. "That was God punishing us."
Brown's approach was to put his players in a dark room and have them spend two hours watching tape of the Boston game, focusing on the mistakes that littered the screen.
They saw the turnovers, the 31 percent field goal shooting, the 0-fer from 3-point range and all the other breakdowns that left the Bobcats with their lowest point total in franchise history.
Brown smiled when asked about the film study.
"It was a great teaching film," he said after his team spent approximately an hour on the practice court.
"I've had plenty of (long film sessions). They all show the same thing. The same things we needed to do better were prevalent over and over and over again.
"They were prepared. We weren't. That's on the coaches. Hopefully we can learn from that."
Brown and the Bobcats don't have to wait long to find out. They will play their home opener tonight at 7 in Time Warner Cable Arena against the New York Knicks.
The Bobcats will still be without injured shooting guard Raja Bell (wrist) and relying on others to play themselves into form because of lingering injuries.
On the positive side, point guard Raymond Felton will be on the floor after receiving 15 stitches Wednesday after hitting the court in a collision with Boston's Kevin Garnett. Felton said he had a headache Thursday and his mouth was sore and swollen.
Getting past the Boston bust was his focus.
"We have a lot of stuff to clean up, but it was just the first game," Felton said. "We have 81 left."
Felton, Gerald Wallace and rookies Gerald Henderson and Derrick Brown were the bright spots in the opener, Brown said.
The Bobcats made 10 first-quarter turnovers, a quick recipe for disaster, but the Celtics managed just 22 first-quarter points.
It was a small thing - "that isn't a bad defensive job," Brown said - but it was something encouraging.
Without Bell, with Tyson Chandler playing his third game in months, Flip Murray still sidelined and Boris Diaw getting over an ankle injury, Brown and his staff have limited options.
"We just have to circle the wagons until Raja and Flip and Tyson are ready to play. We have to let the others step up," Brown said."
Note
The Bobcats exercised their contract option on center Alexis Ajinca for the 2010-11 season.
Exercising his option adds about $1.37million to next season's payroll at a time when the salary cap and, by extension, the luxury-tax threshold will be shrinking. The Bobcats still owe a future first-round pick for the trade that brought Ajinca's rights to Charlotte in 2008.
That pick went from Denver to Minnesota in a later deal involving the rights to former North Carolina guard Ty Lawson. Rick Bonnell
