New Amazon Series Shows Furman Basketball’s Resilience Once Again

GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) – A new series on Amazon Prime takes a behind-the-scenes look at Furman men’s basketball’s historic journey to the NCAA Tournament, and the director and coach said they lived through the series’ title, “Better Together.”

For the five-part documentary, they used only one percent of the footage. Principal Richmond Weaver said it almost didn’t happen, but they are sending a special message because it did.

“You know the ending, but you don’t know how it happened,” Weaver said. “That’s the beauty of stories like this.”

Before his Amazon series could even begin, Weaver faced a big question.

“Funding,” he said. “How were we going to pay for this project?”

So Weaver decided to finance the project himself.

“I took out a home equity line of credit and said, ‘I believe in this project, but I don’t know where it’s going to go.’ I know that from a financial point of view this is not the smartest move, but I believed in the project,” he said.

Weaver then assigned the film crew to the Furman men’s basketball team. He overcame his failure just as the paladins overcame theirs.

In 2022, Furman unexpectedly lost the conference championship. But the following year they made history.

The Paladins not only won the conference championship, but also won their first NCAA Tournament game in nearly 50 years.

“You’re not always in control of your event, but you’re always in control of your reaction,” Furman men’s basketball head coach Bob Ritchie said. “In life, when difficult events happen to you, you can use them as a stepping stone or a stumbling block, and in many cases the choice is yours. This team made a choice that this would be a stepping stone that would push us to something we couldn’t have achieved without it.”

That’s the message Coach Ritchie wants everyone to take away from the series and his team. He even managed to relive their resilience by becoming the conference’s MVP that season.

“Jalen Slawson was at my house the night the movie came out, so Jalen and my kids watched all five episodes in the basement that night,” Ritchie said. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I sat there and my heart was beating, even though I knew what was about to happen. But to relive it was incredible.”

Weaver says Richie’s reaction is worth the risk.

“It fills my heart and makes me realize we’ve captured it,” Weaver said. “We conveyed the story the way I wanted it to be conveyed and created a legacy that they will now have forever.”

The legacy of “Better Together.”

Better Together is now available for purchase on Amazon Prime, and Weaver hopes it will attract enough attention to be streamed for free. Weaver said he’ll probably never get his money back from funding the project, but it was never about the money. It was about sharing a story that even a director like him couldn’t write.