Natural ability (physical or mental) is not strongly correlated with the personality traits that enable a person to "perform", "succeed", or "achieve" in society the way it is structured. In fact, they may be inversely correlated (consider how often people in leadership positions are not apparently exceptional).

I think there are 0 people in NBA that don't have natural ability placing them in 1% of general pop.

Your statement might be applicable to jobs that can be performed more than adequately by 20% percentile talent but not to most sports or music, which have brutal odds due to "winner takes most" dynamics.

There are 540 NBA players. There are ~40 million men aged 18-35 in US.

To beat those odds you have to supremely talented and supremely hard working.

Contrast this with estimated 1.6-4.4 million software engineers.

You can be mid but hard working programmer and beat brilliant but otherwise flawed programmer (not as hard working, oblivious to politics etc.), for some definition of "beat" (like better pay or higher position in company).

As to people in leadership position: consider that to succeed as a manager / leader is more about being good at politics than at solving complex equations.

Then again, the outsized successes were created by competent leaders: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos.

There's a story about, I think, the kickboxer/fighter Alistair Overeem that he was playing Connect 4, and lost, and kept demanding rematches until he had the winning record. Just a refusal to be the loser. That matches every story I've ever heard about Michael Jordan.