Quick update in my methodology.
I have now made an effort to include steals in my model. Because SportVu does not track the amount of time a player spends guarding a ball handler, I first made the general assumption that a player guards the ball handler roughly the same amount of the time as he himself has the ball. Obviously this is not the case for defensive specialists, or for offensive specialists, so to counterbalance that I added on to that one forth of a players minutes, which represents one half of the time a player spends on defense. This also counterbalances the fact that players can almost randomly get a steal with a bad pass or double team - indeed, before this, big men actually dominated the top ten with respect to steals. Using this time frame, I could then calculate the average number of steals per minute and see who was above and below average. I am still fiddling around with this one - if you have any suggestions feel free to let me know.
I have now made an effort to include steals in my model. Because SportVu does not track the amount of time a player spends guarding a ball handler, I first made the general assumption that a player guards the ball handler roughly the same amount of the time as he himself has the ball. Obviously this is not the case for defensive specialists, or for offensive specialists, so to counterbalance that I added on to that one forth of a players minutes, which represents one half of the time a player spends on defense. This also counterbalances the fact that players can almost randomly get a steal with a bad pass or double team - indeed, before this, big men actually dominated the top ten with respect to steals. Using this time frame, I could then calculate the average number of steals per minute and see who was above and below average. I am still fiddling around with this one - if you have any suggestions feel free to let me know.