Episode 92: S.L. Price joins JD to talk about his new book, "The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse"

It's another edition of our unofficial "legends series" as I welcome longtime Sports Illustrated senior writer S.L. Price to the show.

We discuss S.L.'s new book, "The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse".

As a sports writer in the northeast, I covered a lot of lacrosse both at the high school and college levels. It's one of those sports that everybody knows of its existence but it's not mainstream, obviously, like football and basketball. Few know of the sport's ties to Native American history, and unfortunately it has a reputation as a sport for elites. It's most popular at Ivy League schools and private boarding schools in the mid-atlantic and the Northeast, and that reputation is largely deserved — case in point, this year's NCAA Division I men's champion was Cornell.

But lacrosse has deep roots in Native American culture, where it originated almost a thousand years ago. To Natives it's more than a game, and it's important to recognize that the game's origins lie firmly in native lands. Today, many Native American communities are actively reclaiming lacrosse — not only by excelling in the sport but by reminding the world of its true heritage. The most prominent example of this is the Haudenosaunee Nationals Lacrosse Organization, an indigenous sports organization that competes on the world stage and hopes to represent itself as an independent nation at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

Their efforts are reshaping perceptions of the game and restoring its cultural significance, S.L. Price's book is a deep dive into that.