Originally Posted by miamijim
When doing so you decrease by half the number of drive spokes. On 32 spoke wheel there are 16 drive spokes so your pedaling forces are divided amongst 16 spokes. With a radial laced non-drive side you only have 8 spokes handling the load.
What you are saying is that only the "trailing" spokes (angled back from the hub flange toward the rim, not forward) are transmitting torque to the rim from the pedaling action. And you're right that normally you have, in a 32-spoke wheel, 8 trailing spokes on drive- and non-drive sides. However, nearly all of the torque is transmitted by drive-side spokes anyway. Typically ~5% of torque is handled by non-drive-side spokes, unless you have a very stiff hub flange in which case you could get 15%. So radial non-drive isn't actually hurting things here.