What is Steal Percentage?

Steal percentage is a metric that is intended to highlight the percentage of opponent team possessions that end with a steal by a specific player.

How to calculate Steal Percentage

Steal Percentage is calculated as:
$\frac{100 \times \text{Player Steals} \times \text{Team Minutes Played}}{\text{Player Minutes Played}\times\text{Opponent Team Possessions}}$

Example

A player has 2 steals and 39 minutes played, on a team that has played 48 minutes. The opposing team has had 94 possessions in this time.
$\text{Steal Percentage} = \frac{100 \times 2 \times 48}{39 \times 94}$
$\text{Steal Percentage} = \frac{9600}{3666}$
$\text{Steal Percentage} = 0.219$
Therefore, this player’s steal percentage would be 0.2619, 2.62% of total opponent possessions.

What is a steal in basketball?

A steal happens when a defensive player causes a turnover by his positive actions (as long as they are legal).
Steals are credited with the player who caused the turnover, even if they are not the individual that takes possession of the ball.
At the time a steal is credited, the offensive player who lost control of the ball is credited with a turnover as well.

Possess is when a team obtains control of the basketball.
That session of possession ends when they lose possession of the ball – either through scoring, losing the ball, or committing a foul or game violation.

What are minutes played in basketball?

A minute played is the time that a player is on the court during active gameplay.
Team minutes are the time that the team has played. In the example on this page a 48-minute basketball game (sometimes team minutes are recorded as a total of the minutes played by each player on the team – instead of 48 minutes being recorded, 240 minutes is recorded (48-minute game x 5 players).