Hi Philip,

I am not sure if we fully understand your exact use case, especially the part how each player's record should be called and presented on the Page(s).

For example, if you wish to first load an initial table, which has a smaller number of columns and to allow the front end users to click into a certain player row - In order to load this 'template' which can show 'more details about the player', such as career stats, season stats, and recent games of that selected player.

For something like that, perhaps the best way is to use our Master-Details add-on.

This add-on can be used if you wish to first present an initial table with less data/ less columns;

then if a user makes an action you set up,  it can load "more details" only for the selected row ID

(1. If the “Row click” is selected, users will be able to access details for a row by clicking on it. 

2. If the “Button click” is selected, a new column will be added to the table, where each row would get a button opening the details for it.)

You an also set up in which way you wish the details to load;

1. It can be as a PopUp/modal to reveal more columns of that row

2. A template Post with placeholders

3. Or a template custom Wordpress Page with placeholders to load data for more columns of that row.

Please check more about Master Details here, with an example.

We also recently added a feature of "Parent > Child" table relations, you can see our example table and a guide on that Documentation as well.

You can also test Master Detail Add-on features on this sandbox site.

Let me know how that seems,or if you need something different entirely for your use-case?

-When it comes to the data source, you said it is originally an API - but it will pass the data to a Google Sheet.
If that is the case, I presume you will use some formula or script to pass this to a Google Sheet.

- If you need to have formulas/scripts on a Google Sheet, please use this workaround guide, because you can't directly link a sheet like that.

- Or, maybe even easier, you can directly link your source API data to our Table via Nested JSON.

And i just wanted to point out that you can try wpDataTables before purchasing

 on our sandbox Demo sites ( you can find links for the main plugin Demo,  

as well as add-on Demos, in my signature),

and there is a 15-day money-back guarantee period, 

so if you purchase the plugin, you can safely fully test it out, and if it doesn't fit your needs you can request and receive a refund in that period. ( same goes for all plugins and add-ons)

Let me know if you have any additional questions.