On top of these one off deletions there will undoubtedly be cases when such a delete needs to be done. Off the top of my head, I would say a logging table may well need this type of delete to be done.

The original programmer of the TOP option in t-sql had a reason back then, that was a good enough reason to allow this behaviour 😛

EDIT: I find the TOP option good when doing updates on production tables which can otherwise cause blocking. It's not always nice, but this is real life and not a walt disney film !