JSON File data Orientation Types

 If you open the link with the documentation, you'll see there is an orient option that can handle JSON formatted in different ways:

'split' : dict like {index -> [index], columns -> [columns], data -> [values]}

'records' : list like [{column -> value}, ... , {column -> value}]

'index' : dict like {index -> {column -> value}}

'columns' : dict like {column -> {index -> value}}

'values' : just the values array

In this case, the JSON is formatted with a 'records' orientation, so you'll need to use that value in the read_json() method. You can tell that the format is 'records' by comparing the pattern in the documentation with the pattern in the JSON file.