LeBron James breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's scoring record won't silence his critics, so says his former teammate Michael Beasley ... telling TMZ Sports, "they gon' keep hating."
Remember, James is only a few points away from becoming the NBA's all-time scoring leader -- a record that Kareem has held for almost four decades.
You would think with such an accomplishment, the ones who doubt King James would come around ... but Beasley says that won't happen, even when he's crowned.
"They gon' keep hating," the former NBA power forward tells us at LAX this week.
"It's a good percentage of the world that just wanna go against the grain. That's literally what we get. We get the ones who wanna go against the grain."
Beasley -- who played with LBJ in Miami and Los Angeles -- says James deserves respect from the doubters ... and they have no choice but to give him his flowers after this feat.
"He earned it," MB says, "You can't really say too much after that, you know. He the best."
BTW ... Beasley says he wouldn't mind playing alongside LeBron again, telling us he'd be down to sign back with the Lakers.
"Yeah, 100%. If they called, I ain't gonna let my pride get in the way, 100%"