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BEIJING — The only coach who has won a championship in the N.B.A. and in the N.C.A.A. turns 79 later this week. But Larry Brown didn’t answer the phone to discuss looming birthday celebrations.

Brown wanted to talk about Gregg Popovich.

As the Popovich-coached United States men's national basketball team prepared to play France in Wednesday’s quarterfinals of the FIBA World Cup in China, Brown was determined to focus on what the next few games could mean for his longtime friend and colleague. Bad memories of a humbling bronze at the Athens Olympics in 2004, for these two, are still fresh.

“It’ll put a lot of things behind us all,” Brown said.

Maybe the knockout round of this World Cup can be a salve as Brown suggests. Just don’t forget that the Americans, even if they subdue the Rudy Gobert-led French in Dongguan, would need two additional wins for Popovich, 70, to realize some measure of redemption .

Those games wouldn’t be layups, either, since this United States squad, bereft of marquee names, faces the unappetizing prospect of playing Argentina in the semifinals just to get to Sunday’s title game. That’s after Argentina stunned the team and singular star — Serbia and Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets — that the Americans had long feared most.