What about the WWW did he invent? Not hypertext, not SGML, not even MIME headers. There were even other competing hypertext systems like Hypercard and Gopher. TBL is extremely overrated.
Note that TBL never expected HTTP and HTML to replace all other protocols, they were just intended as a hypertext system which could connect to all the existing systems like Gopher, NNTP and so on, thereby increasing the usefulness of all the systems.
"conceived of the web in 1989 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as a way to allow scientists around the world to share information with each other on the internet. He introduced a naming scheme (URIs), a communications protocol (HTTP), and a language for creating webpages (HTML). His open-source approach to coding the first browser and server is often credited with helping catalyzing the web’s rapid growth"
So no, not hypertext, not SGML, not MIME: URI, HTML (an application of SGML) and HTTP.
If you're criticising him for building on top of what others did, no man is an island. He did improve on what was already there. Why not read the details for yourself?[2].
In Tim's words: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web."
[1] https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
The still-used command line browser Lynx was first made for Gopher in fact, before being adapted for HTTP, which it still does.