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ADR-0007: Stats V3 Play-By-Play History Boundary

Decision statusAccepted

Context

ADR-0006 selected NBA Stats V3 as the historical source. The usable history is bounded by playbyplayv3, rather than by a schedule row or box score alone: possession segmentation and lineup reconstruction require a non-empty event stream.

Direct source probes found populated V3 play-by-play responses from 1996-97 onward. Equivalent 1995-96 and earlier probes returned valid V3 envelopes with empty game.actions arrays. Some older scheduleleaguev2 responses also contain unplayed exhibition or if-necessary placeholders with status other than final and both team identities set to zero.

Decision

  • Treat 1996-97 as the practical lower boundary for V3-based play-by-play acquisition.
  • Do not treat earlier V3 box-score availability as possession-model coverage.
  • Exclude a schedule row only when it is non-final and has no identifiable home and away teams.
  • Retain final games and every game with valid team identities under the normal strict catalog contract.
  • Archive regular-season play-by-play before optional endpoint or postseason expansion, with raw files as the resume boundary.

Consequences

The acquisition target is approximately 30 seasons of regular-season event data, 1996-97 through the current completed season. The boundary is source- and endpoint-specific: a different NBA-owned feed could extend earlier history in a future decision, but it must be evaluated independently and must not be merged silently with the V3 archive.

The catalog can contain identified preseason and All-Star games for provenance. They are not selected by the historical regular-season archive flow unless an explicit season type is requested.