I'm not sure what youre trying to say - that higher picks are better? Of course they are. This just proves the order of magnitude we're talking about. Fangraphs came up with the below for the value of the top 10 picks a few years back after regressing projected performance of the slots, $/WAR, and discounting it back - each slot is worth $1.5M other than the absolute top couple of picks or about a $20M difference between pick 10 and pick 1.
Of course the below assumes that the owners that arent putting competitive products on the field care about winning to begin with. I dont think theres much evidence there for the teams that are constantly in the cellar, which brings us to the perverse incentives that are created under revenue sharing. Teams are guaranteed $110M in revenue sharing a year (the average of 48% of local revenues).Each teams share of national media is $90M. So team revenues can easily be projected at $200M per year plus 52% of projected local revenue, but roughly 65% of the average team's revenues are guaranteed day 1 regardless of what they spend on payroll.
Realistically is $110M is average, I suspect that there are a number of teams where the number is $40-50M (for example the Braves reported total baseball revenue of $500M and I suspect the yankees, Red Sox, Mets, etc. are probably in a similar range so some teams need to be balancing this out). For those teams, not spending on payroll is the economic incentive - they just dont have an incentive to spend if 80% of their revenue is guaranteed. That incentive dwarfs $5-$10M of draft value, especially for teams that are concerned with winning to begin with (and theres obvious examples of this, e.g., Pitt using their high picks solely on guys that are cheap). Its a classic free-rider problem. To spend to win is entirely negative margin spending.
There are probably some teams (e.g., 2020 sox) that are incentivized solely by the pick, but thats true in all sports (including the NBA even with the lottery). I dont think the 2020 Sox is at all what the players are concerned about though - its the teams that are never competing; not the teams that occasionally run into bad years.