It is saying that you can't expect all the players on the football team to collect the same salary as the star players, which incidentally is exactly what happens.
But that misses the point too. The star researchers aren't standing on just their own work. They are able to pull off what they do because of all the other researchers in their field.
A researchers work is largely dependent not just on advances in related fields, but in their colleagues incrementally advancing their own ideas. Eventually an all-star may envision and pull off a way of combining all those advances previously unseen, but it still requires those advances to have been made in the first place.
That's how science advances, not by individual genius, but by the collective ability of the field.
Even if 70% of the field aren't doing groundbreaking work, the work they are doing allows the other 30% to focus on the groundbreaking things.
In my own experiences I've found that to be mostly a myth. Most researchers are too focused on grants, running labs, etc to actually get proper collaboration and support done. It seems the "good researchers" who are actually worth paying have built a career from advancing their one topic from day one, lone wolf style.
Probably 50% of that non-groundbreaking work you mention is completely worthless, and the field grew in spite of those wasted resources, as dnautics says.
Even then, if the system was honest with individuals about their science abilities (not everyone can be a superstar), then there would be much benefit in preventing these people from advancing on their own in a broken system, and giving them the opportunity to have an actual job in the groundbreaking areas as a tech or such.
> "The star researchers aren't standing on just their own work. They are able to pull off what they do because of all the other researchers in their field."
It's more like they are able to pull off what they do in spite of all the other researchers. (that are spawning off bad hypotheses, producing fraud, using up precious grant money, etc.)
Science is an exploratory discipline. You don't know what's most valuable until you've got the benefit of often 20-50 years of hindsight.