However if your in or near the top 250 the probability of you encountering a equal or better rated team is very low. And no it’s not a population problem, because the top percentile will always be the top percentile regardless of population size.
While it’s true that “top percentile is top percentile”, that top percentile is not correctly represented in the leaderboard. A system where legendary tier is the top 2% of players, regardless of rating is a system based on percentiles. The fact that the difference between top 1 and top 10 is more than 200 points is a population issue (and it doesn’t help the fact that top players are playing just enough games to avoid rating decay and not actualy competing).