Laravel deferred service provider `provides` not being called

I have the following definition:

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
use App\SomeClass;

class SomeProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    protected $defer = true;

    public function register()
    {
        $this->app->bind(SomeClass::class, function ($app)
        {
            return new SomeClass();
        });
    }

    public function provides()
    {
        die("This never gets called");
        return [SomeClass::class];
    }
}

And it returns an instance of SomeClass as expected, except that according to the documentation, if $defer is true then the provides() method should be called. No matter what I set $defer to, and no matter if I actually ask for an instance of SomeClass or not, provides() is never called.

The way I'm asking for an instance of the class is as follows:

App::make('SomeClass');

via Chebli Mohamed