I've been making almost daily iTunes syncs of my devices since I got an iPhone 5, which encompasses many versions of iTunes since then up to 12.9.5 on Mojave 10.14.6, the end of the line. Currently, that includes an iPad Air running 10.3.3, and an XS running 14.0.1.
A backup is not a regular part of the sync process, so it is patently false that Apple forces that upon users, or that there is no way to prevent them without extraordinary means.
I do not, however, have iTunes set to automatically sync devices ("Method 1" in the linked article), which is the first setting I change when starting from a clean OS install, as well as the auto-backups directed to iCloud ("Method 3"), even though I don't have enough space to backup up both devices, as the failure notices on my XS often remind me.
If anything, I'm surprised to hear that iTunes will back up as part of a regular sync since that has not been my experience for all these years. However, it still does perform an automatic backup prior to installing an iOS update. But even that may be a more recent addition since that was a precaution I already took in the past and don't recall noting the redundancy of a manual and auto backup in prior versions.
Backups, even incremental ones like iTunes performs if the current one hasn't been archived or deleted, do take a few minutes, and not something I'd want to occur during every sync.
One may criticize Apple for being overly cautious, and not explicitly detailing what combinations of settings results in what actions without a visit to their support docs (woe to those who don't password protect their backups, and can unknowingly lose their health and keychain data), but to say that it's not preventable simply isn't true.
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