"If this had been shot with one capture, either the highlights would have been blown out, or the shadows would have blocked" Christopher said in the article.
What kind of blockage is Christopher talking about? what is a blocked shadow?. After reading the entire article, I see no mention of digital noise, the one and only reason to shoot more than once when doing HDR photography. If shooting once you can preserve the highlights at the same time you get an acceptable level of noise in the shadows, you got it right. There is no point to shoot more.
Bracketing has no magical effects in the final result beyond the degree of visible noise. In fact if bracketing is not needed for noise reasons, it becomes undesirable and tiring (more effort, more time, more memory and CPU resources, ghosting issues,... in brief more limitations).
There is nothing you can get from a bracketed series of pictures, that you cannot get from a single shot as long as it contains detail in the highlights and acceptable noise in the shadows. I'd bet some of the scenes in the article didn't require any bracketing.
There is also no point in bracketing less than 2EV or 3EV apart, the contribution of additional shots is null. Finally, the less noisy sensors become, the less reasons remain for bracketing.
Regards