I've been wondering this season why Riek is subbed in during meaningful situations, but only plays a few minutes then leaves the game for good. While it should be fairly obvious that if he wasn't 7'1" he wouldn't ever leave the bench, he hasn't played half bad when he's gotten the chance (at least not compared to some of his showings last year), and he sure puts in more effort on defense and rebounding than certain others we're all familiar with. So, I'm wondering if the reason he's used so sparingly is that he's got some kind of medical stipulations on how many minutes per game he can play owing to his knee injury, similar to Yao's situation earlier this year. I got that impression since he plays only in the first half and usually about the same number of minutes from game to game. Possible, or is Riek just much more of a liability than I'm giving him credit for?
