Steal Percentage estimates the percentage of opponent possessions that ended in a steal by a given player while on the floor.
Rate-based and pace-adjusted. A genuine indicator of active perimeter defense and anticipation.
Jewell et al. (JQAS) find that STL% shows null or near-null significance as a predictor of player value at high minutes loads — the player tier APEX operates in. Steals are gameable (gambling for steals inflates the metric while potentially harming team defense), and elite defenders frequently play controlled defense that produces few steals rather than gambling for high-risk plays.
STL% was removed from APEX in v1.7 based on Jewell et al.'s finding of null significance at high minutes loads. At its effective weight (~3% of composite), STL% added noise rather than signal and was partially redundant with DefOnOff for elite defenders. The v1.7 metric audit confirmed that removing STL% did not reduce backtest accuracy over 40 seasons.