No question about it, rootbound conditions are not good for the plant. This may come off as arrogant, but I'm not sure why this is even worthy of discussion, except to a noob that has little to no experience with plant culture. Again, there are no theories if you understand the growth cycle of a root system.
I've never done more than one upcan. From a 20 oz styro-cup (6.5" tall) or a one gallon to germ in to a final 3-5 gallon pot. It's best to sex in the final pot although it's a PITA as it requires more soil and labor.
You can work around rootbound conditions (regarding nutrient uptake efficiency) somewhat by using a complete food like Dyna-Gro. I did experiments years ago, testing various stuff on Mexican seedlings. One of the experiments was how rootbound conditions affected plant health so I applied Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro. In spite of extremely high temps both night and day, application of pesticides (to test for foliage burn) and other stuff I did to these labrats, they are still healthy at 18" tall in small 20 oz cups. Using tall pots precludes rootbound conditions somewhat.
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