Bruce Bowen is #20 in his class and got $100,000. Maybe #40 only gets $10,000 but still, dont assume they have no value to the shoe companies. The NBA has more players who werent Top 10 recruits than who were.
Sure, but what about the players who have massive shoe/company contracts? Most of them were very highly rated recruits.
Carmelo was a top 5 recruit.
James Harden was the 11th rated recruit.
Lebron/Kobe both were top 5 recruits that skipped college.
Kyrie Irving was a top 5 recruit.
Kevin Durant was a top 5 recruit.
Derrick Rose was a top 5 recruit.
Obviously Steph Curry is an outlier here. But as you can tell, the players with the biggest shoe contracts were definitely top 10 (or 11) recruits.