Of course the Raptors would try to draw inspiration from a muckraking Danish-American journalist and social reformer from the 1800s.

Why not?

It’s not like traditional NBA values and motivational techniques have led to resounding success.

Jacob Riis, described as a “social reformer, muckraking journalist and social documentary photographer” on his online biographical page, has provided the team with its mantra for the season: “Pound the Rock.”

It is supposed to imbue the young team with the knowledge and confidence that if they keep plugging away, hammering away at the task at hand, steadfastly refusing to give up when all looks lost, eventually things will turn for the better.

Or so coach Dwane Casey hopes.

“It’s about a stonecutter,” Casey said Sunday, explaining the mantra that’s omnipresent in the team’s inner sanctum, emblazoned on the inside of the locker-room door and the wall of the team’s Air Canada Centre practice facility. “You may hit that stone 100 times but it may take the 101st time to crack that stone.

“For us, every time we walk on the court, it’s an opportunity to get better. It may not happen the first week, it may not happen the second week but after that, we want to continue to pound the rock and break through and get better . . . and develop a winning program.”

Now, no one is suggesting that some slogan is going to immediately turn a young group of unproven talent into some kind of NBA juggernaut, or even an Eastern Conference playoff contender. But it does speak at some level to the so-called “culture change” that Casey wants to effect and even if he borrowed the phrase from others — he said the San Antonio Spurs have used it, as have the Miami Heat and a handful of American colleges — it is something unique to Toronto and could be a rallying cry.

“That’s what we’ve got to have is patience, pound the rock every day,” said the coach. “That’s how hard we have to work every day. It’s the patience we’ve got to have as a program, as a coaching staff and it’s not easy. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

“Is it going to win games for us? No. But it’s something we’re going to hang our hat on.”

Maybe literally.

There is a rather large stone, 590 kilograms by Casey’s estimation, just inside the team’s locker room. It’s to serve as a constant reminder that success won’t come immediately, or without hard work.

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It also runs counter to what Casey was used to seeing and hearing in his last job, as a member of a Dallas Mavericks staff that had larger goals in mind a year ago.

“We had “Hit First” in Dallas, “First to 100” and “Embrace pressure,” he said. “We had a little bit different agenda — ours was to win a championship and if we didn’t win a championship, we saw that as a failure almost each year we were in Dallas. That was the pressure we were under there. It’s a different mantra.”

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