Actually its important for both pilots to attend the brief, flight plans weather, notams etc. Crew bus problems are not really important when it comes to doing things the correct way, if this is what caused the issue.
Late departure because of crew bus is the stations problem, not the front end crew.
When I was there last fall, my crew didn't want to have any part of "Ops" -- they were very happy to take the bus right to the airplane and leave me to do the planning and paying and stuff...
When it comes down to it, it's not much different than any other place: Once I got to the airplane with the paperwork, they looked at it just as they would have if the station rep brought it out in any other station (except they got to snicker at the handwritten flight plan I had to do).