Zuckerberg and Gates were not admitted because their talents would immediately help a revenue-producing part of the university continue to be revenue-producing. There is no comparison. Zion was admitted to be on the basketball team. If he had announced before-hand that he would not be playing college basketball but would be spending the summer and vacations playing with a semi-pro team to keep in shape, would he have been admitted? Duke needed Zion a lot more than Zion needed Duke. That is why basketball players are wooed far beyond how much Zuckerberg was wooed as a 17 year old senior. If the NBA returns to allowing high school players to enter the draft, then perhaps Zion would have done that. But the system is set up so that the absolutely best way to showcase your talents for the draft is through college basketball or football. That is NOT the case with college baseball and I do not believe there is the same corruption in recruiting, even though some players may still leave for the majors. Those players have a choice of two equally fine ways to get to the pros. Great basketball and football players do not.
The equivalent would be if Harvard had a film production arm that made films that earned huge amounts of money for the school and they vied with other colleges that also had film production arms and those colleges competed for the most famous and talented high school actors and those actors had no place for showcase their craft for one year except at universities or abroad.