Steals: The NBA’s Next Gold Rush
Basketball is the constant search for the smallest of edges. It’s the driver of team building at the macro level. A 37% three-point-shooting wing over a 35% three-point-shooting wing is an edge. A center who pulls down an 18% offensive rebounding rate instead of 15% is an edge. A guard who finishes 64% at the rim instead of 61% is an edge. Every front office is in a constant race to find these edges.
Small edges drive on-court play as well. A defense will tag a roller because that corner three shooter can’t make them pay the way the pick-and-roll can. An offense will hunt a switch to find a slightly worse defender for their best player to attack. A coach goes bigger to create rebounds, while another goes smaller to shoot more and run in transition. On and on the dance goes all game long, until the edges one team creates outdo the other.
But these are all defined by small edges. When a significant edge is discovered, it blows the game wide open. The Moreyball-era Houston Rockets are the best example of this. They eschewed the midrange game to maximize threes and layups; at their peak, in 2017-18, Houston took 47% of their shots from deep and 35% at the rim. Their midrange frequency was dead last in the league. In fact, from 2012 to 2022, Houston was dead last in midrange frequency in every single season. With James Harden at the helm, they finished with a top-10 offense every season. That revolution broke the game open.
The average NBA team in 2024-25 took 39% of their shots from deep and 31% at the rim. If you go back to the first year of the Harden/Morey pairing in 2012-13, the average was 22% from three and 36% at the rim. The midrange has cratered from the most frequent shot (42%) to the least frequent (30%) in just over ten years. That was the product of the three-point gold rush.
Now, every team is on the hunt for shooting. Guards, wings, and even some bigs that can’t hit shots beyond the arc are losing value by the minute. Everyone saw the light, and the big edge generated by the “dunks and threes” philosophy has become a small edge. Thus, the search for the newest big edge begins. And I’m here to tell you now, steals are the next big edge that will create a gold rush in the NBA. Let me explain.
The Hypothesis
For these purposes, we’ll be focusing on the playoffs. The end goal of all teams is to lift that Larry come June. So, unless stated otherwise, I’ll be using playoff stats to explain the value of the steal.
Per Cleaning the Glass (like all my stats!), the average transition possession in the 2024/25 playoffs is worth 1.14 points. Conversely, the average halfcourt possession is worth 0.96 points. Going even deeper, the average transition possession coming from a steal is worth 1.36 points. These numbers will form the basis of my thinking.
Pushing a normal half-court possession into transition qualifies as a small edge. Take the Indiana Pacers, the best pushers of live rebounds in these playoffs. Indiana scores 1.05 points per half-court possession, which is the best mark of all playoff teams. They score 1.35 points per transition chance off a live rebound, also the best mark in these playoffs. So, roughly, any live rebound they push in a hurry is worth 0.3 extra points per possession. That’s a strong edge when you add up their average mark of 32.7 defensive rebounds per game.
But Indiana didn’t add the most points per 100 possessions through transition play of these playoffs. They finished behind two other teams: the Los Angeles Clippers and the Oklahoma City Thunder. LA lost a tight first-round series to the powers of Nikola Jokic, so I can’t fault their process. Oklahoma City’s transition prowess has defined them all year and continued into the postseason. In addition to the second-most points added via the average transition possession, they have the second highest transition frequency behind only the Detroit Pistons (who have a third of the sample size).
This is where the steals come into play. OKC led the league in steals per game in the regular season, and has generated the highest turnover rate in this postseason. The formula that fueled them all year has put them three games from a championship: we are going to take the ball from you, and we are going to score.
Let’s do some rough math here—the Thunder average 10.6 steals per game in these playoffs and score 1.43 points per transition possession off a steal. For argument’s sake, let’s say two of those 11 steals don’t turn into transition, because I don’t have the money for the fancy sites that could tell me this. So, nine transition possessions per game at 1.43 PPP equals 12.87 points. Their Finals opponents, the Indiana Pacers, generate 7.5 steals per game at 1.38 PPP. Being generous and saying six of those turn into transition, that’s 8.28 points. Oklahoma City is developing 4.59 extra points per game in transition with their steal rates compared to Indiana.
And that’s not where the math stops. Remember that the average halfcourt offensive possession has been worth 0.96 points. Unlike a blocked shot, a steal is a guaranteed zero. Possession ends. Finito. So, if you’re the Thunder, a steal that takes away 0.96 points and adds 1.21 on average (12.87 transition points added divided by 10.6 steals). That’s 2.17 net points per steal leading to transition.
Alright, that was a lot of math. Take a breather. We have a bit more to get through.
A 2.17-point swing on a given possession is a MASSIVE edge by NBA standards. Let’s consider the small edges that teams look for again. The average NBA player shot 35.8% from three this postseason. So, the average three was worth 1.074 points. If shooting was your problem, you looked for upgrades. Let’s say a GM moves a player taking four threes per game at league average rates for a player hitting 38% of four threes per game. That’s an extra 0.066 points per shot, and 0.264 per game. Stretched over 82 games, that’s 21.65 total points in a season. Those are the margins we’re operating on here.
Now, I am throwing context out. That extra shooting edge may open up more plays, change defensive coverages against your primary options, and improve your points per possession in ways that are harder to quantify. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here. If a steal can be worth two points, finding a player that averages 1.5 steals to 1.0 can add an extra point each game. The additive nature of each steal is far above any edge you can reasonably create.
Put it like this. Steph Curry took ten threes per game in these playoffs, making 40%. That’s 12 points per game for the greatest shooter in NBA history. If a league average playoff shooter took that volume, it adds up to 10.74 points. Gravity aside, Steph was worth 1.26 more points per game than your typical shooter. That’s worth less than the average steal. And there’s only one Steph Curry, and only one team has that edge. Plenty of teams can find a way to generate an extra steal.
The Application
Maybe you’re thinking this is junk math. I’m not Daryl Morey. I don’t know how to build complex data models to flesh out the values of each individual play. I’m a guy with a laptop and a premium stats subscription who watches a concerning amount of basketball. You can nitpick the math, but the critical assumptions remain: on average, the steal is now the most valuable play in basketball. Now the question becomes, how does this manifest?
Teams may try to find the next Dyson Daniels (a player I have written about time after time). The third-year Aussie went from bench piece on a middling Pelicans team to First Team All-Defense by wrangling three steals per game with the Hawks. That’s an astronomical number of steals, one unlikely to be repeated.
But let’s look at something more attainable: Alex Caruso, acquired for pennies on the dollar, is keying this Thunder defense. His 1.7 steals per game are worth 3.7 points to Oklahoma City this postseason.
There are other ways to get in on the gold rush. Point guards like Tyrese Haliburton, typically admonished for being “conservative passers,” may increase in value. He who prevents transition chances is as good as the man who creates them, in a sense. Teams may hunt for stellar transition defenders like Draymond Green, Andrew Nembhard, Derrick White, and Derrick Jones Jr. It’s no coincidence that some of the best transition players in the league are/were part of teams that have made deep playoff runs in recent memory.
You don’t need me to find evidence of the rising value of the steal. I constantly come back to the Thunder—in addition to their lead in forced turnovers this postseason, their offense has the second-best turnover rate. If Indiana were to beat them in these Finals, I’d bet on that win being fueled by transition and a shift in the turnover deficit. Just look at Game 3 last night. Indiana won the steal battle 13-6, scoring 1.25 points per transition chance off a steal. That right there swung the 116-107 victory.
The last great NBA dynasty was put over the top by three-point shooting. The next champion will be fueled by the steal.
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