TBH, I hate these kinds of articles. Instead of titling it something like "Things to be aware of with CSS background-image", or even the catchier "Don't use CSS background-image for a foreground image", it uses a much broader, click-baity unwarranted title about "anti-pattern".

I'm glad that background-images aren't indexed by search engines, or made available to screen readers, and I obviously know they aren't downloaded before the CSS that references them is. I think all of those as good things, because I use background-image just for that - things that not primary. When I print, if excluding background images makes the page unreadable, I think of it as using background images wrong.

Calling a widely used, useful feature an "anti-pattern" just because some people may use it wrong is ludicrous.