Yes, sprints on paper are what you describe, but in reality, they rarely ensure deliveries or predictability, they even tend to hinder productivity as they narrow the body of work of a whole team. Think about it, after a week, what is usually the distribution of work of your team? For me, it was always very unbalanced, where people where working overtime and others (best case scenario) would be looking for some work to do.

I understand the author's heated post, because I've been there so many times, and I think THIS IS THE POINT of this article, the point that you are missing. Good manager shouldn't rely as much on a set tools that are broken or unfit for their team.

I my opinion, not enough people question Sprints and their viability and benefits. And he's right, backlogs are by far just a list of the things you wont do.

If your tool cannot fix your issues, the manager should. Use post-its, emails, spreadsheet, large whiteboards, hang a TV screen in the room, pdf, discussions... There is endless possibilities, be creative.