It often seems that there is no limits on what kids will talk about on the web these days – and now many don’t even do it anonymously, but rather post all kinds of crazy stuff linked to their myspace and facebook pages. While this can shock many older folks, what might really bother them is if (say) their kids started (I don’t know) saying things that (just for example) threatened to sabotage the family business.

You know, like if you were the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers (Jerry Buss), and your star player had publically demanded a trade a few weeks ago, and issued a formal trade request to the team’s GM, while calling you a liar… and then backed off just a little bit, while leaving the trade demand on the table.

Somewhere in there you get busted for a DUI, are trying to figure out what to do about this Kobe thing, have a few meetings, and head off to China for a bit while a few of your family members offer thoughts on the subject here and there to calm things down a bit.

In such a case, you’d probably be doing one of two things – planning to keep Kobe in LA and hoping the story goes away (particularly to help with ticket sales and such), or planning to trade him. But even in the latter case, you kind of want other teams in the league to think you are leaning towards keeping him, in order to help with trade negotiations – rarely does the opening line “we really need to get rid of this superstar immediately – what will you give me?” maximize returns.

In turn, what you probably don’t want to see is your son posting this (as reported in the LA Times) on his MySpace page:

“If you’ve been following the Kobe drama, I want to let you know it’s not really drama … sometimes we all need to make a change in our lives and that’s all it is. Popular or unpopular, when it’s time, it’s time. Good luck Kobe wherever you go!”

Now Johnny doesn’t officially work for the Lakers like the rest of the Buss kids (son Jimmy is the assistant GM, daughter Jeanie is the VP of business operations), but he was the president of the Sparks (the WBNA franchise) until the team was sold recently, and it can be reasonably assumed he is in the loop.

He’s also not exactly a kid, and probably should have known better – because it sure doesn’t make it look like the team is as optimistic about keeping him in L.A. as some of the other family members are saying.