No one gives a **** about lacrosse, lots of people give a **** about football, basketball, hockey, baseball, tennis, golf, auto racing, mixed martial arts and, everywhere else in the world except the US and Canada, soccer. This isn't hard to understand. The sport attracts a big audience and makes millions of dollars so the athletes make millions of dollars. It isn't like some arbitrary rule, it is based on public interest in the sport and the money it attracts.
And this isn't something that's hard to measure like musical or acting talent. Sports are simple win-or-lose games and the stats are pretty cut and dry. The winners and the guys who put up big stats are the ones who make careers out of it. Some of them are overvalued by lousy general managers but more than pretty much any business there is a clear incentive to have the truly best people at their job working for you. These are very public businesses. Because it is a very direct competition everyone knows which teams are being run well and which ones are not. You do what some big corporations do where they hire through nepotism or have an old boys club and your team sucks and the fans know your team sucks and stop supporting you. The best guitar player in the world might be stuck playing small clubs because he doesn't have the connections to get a major label deal or the money to promote his music to a wide audience. The best football player in the world sure as hell is not struggling to make a living unless he is a total idiot. If you have talent, you try out for you high school team, make it, go to college and play on that team and then get drafted by the NFL. Yeah there are probably mid-level NFL talent guys who fall through the cracks but the absolute best of the best? No way. There are scouts with their eyes open at every level and if you truly stand out they WANT you on their team. Plus it's an industry where playing office politics to get a raise is less important. You can be the most socially awkward weirdo who gets along with nobody but if you lead the league in touchdowns that year, you've got job security. The measurement of ability is so public that you can't get passed over because you aren't buddies with the boss. Yeah as a coach that happens, but not as a player.
It's a multi-million dollar industry, the people most responsible for attracting customers are paid very well and, unlike most jobs, it is very easy to determine who is good at their job and who isn't. It's not going to work perfectly but it works a whole **** load better than most jobs.
And just because you don't care about sports, doesn't make the athletes overpaid. You can argue that sports don't deserve to be so popular but they are and within that it doesn't make sense to argue that people that attract millions of dollars in business don't deserve millions in salary. I don't think Lady Gaga deserves to be as successful as she is in terms of musical merit BUT she is not overpaid because there is a large audience that wants to buy her albums and go to her concerts, even if I don't personally understand the appeal.