Who played in an NBA game (box-score derived availability)

Home/away player arrays with min_played and a derived played boolean, from post-game box scores. Self-teaching: every response's meta block carries these same semantics so the payload explains itself.

• data_type: post_game_participation: this is "who played", a strong historical availability signal for modeling. It is NOT a pre-tip lineup (for true pre-tip lineups, 2025-26 onward, use /v1/nba/games/{id}/lineups).
• Semantics: arrays contain ONLY players who logged minutes. A player who is absent did not play: DNP (coach decision), inactive, or injured, and this endpoint cannot distinguish those reasons. Absence never appears as played: false.
• Coverage: seasons 2019-20 through 2025-26 (box-score era). Games before 2019-10-22, preseason and All-Star games are not covered.
• For true pre-tip availability on current and upcoming games, cross-reference GET /v1/injuries?sport=nba (league-wide active injury reports) or GET /v1/players/{id}/injury. Historical pre-tip injury reports do not exist at our source.
• starter is true/false only for games with lineup coverage (2025-26 onward), null for earlier games; historical starter data does not exist at our source and we will not fabricate it.

id accepts a canonical match UUID or a 10-digit numeric game id (bridged via the games list's match_id). A real game outside coverage returns 200 with empty arrays and meta.availability_available: false; 404 only when the id resolves to nothing.