This exactly. You cannot cherry pick tops for bear markets and bottoms for bull markets and then claim the overlap. Reality sits somewhere in the middle.
On morningstar if you bring up a total return chart, since 1/1/2000 VBTLX outperformed VTSAX until this latest bump finally put stock in the plus column. This is of course also cherry picking and there are clear valuation differences at the time, but that is a long time to essentially not be compensated for risk. But this is why investing over time is valuable - your overall returns should not be a reflection of two specific snapshots.
