There’s no need to imagine that - it’s been how leagues have operated in the past - and it instantly turns into a fiasco. You need to understand that a league needs to be a collective to survive. It doesn’t work as a free market pure system. Do you honestly think the New York Yankees putting the Kansas City Royals out of business is the same thing as Mr. Jefferson outperforming and thereby running Random White Guy Dry Cleaners into the ground is the same thing?
The problem, is the league isn’t a collective. They have limited revenue sharing, but since the revenue is distributed unevenly, they have to force the players into a collective in order to control costs. If the league shared revenue, and required player salaries to be paid out of that revenue, then there would be no need to impose salary caps.