Striving to be the greatest comes with a steep cost. LeBron James knows that all too well.

The three-time NBA champion recently revealed that he's so "addicted to the process" of becoming the "greatest" baller to ever do it that he had to apologize to his wife, Savannah, for being so caught up that he sometimes forgets how important she and their three kids are.

"I am addicted to the process. I’m addicted to the process," James told his Cleveland Cavaliers' teammates Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye on the latest episode of their podcast Road Trippin'. "It’s so funny. I just told my wife the other day, I apologized to her. She was like, 'What are you apologizing for?’ I said, ‘Because the journey that I’m on to want to be the greatest to ever play this game or to the point where no one ever forgets what I accomplished, I’ve at times lost the fact of how important you are to this whole thing. … I want you to understand that along this journey while I’m playing this game there will be times that I lose the fact of how important you and my three kids are — my babies are.'"

This gives an entirely new meaning to the adage "heavy is the head that wears the crown." James, 32, fulfilled his destiny of leading the Cavs to an NBA championship last year, ending Cleveland's painful 52-year drought of not winning a major sports title. Soon thereafter, he spoke candidly with Sports Illustrated about chasing down Michael Jordan's GOAT legacy.

This season, King James has been leading the Cavs' push towards a title defense, averaging 26 points, 8.8 assists and 8.2 rebounds per game. 

While on the same podcast, James also spoke about fulfilling his destiny — a topic he learned about via reading Paulo Coelho's classic novel, The Alchemist.

"The whole thing about empowerment of yourself and having your visions become a reality and the more and more that you dream and actually talk about something that you want to do, it can become true," James said. "That was one of the one things I got out of it. As complex as that book is and as deep as that book is — it is so, so deep — I was able to figure out a way to translate it to my life at that point in time where I was like, 'Oh, I can remember when I was the 11-year-old kid and I was telling myself, ‘Why me?' somedays, and I was always telling myself, ‘OK, let’s change the narrative of why me, why us, why are we put in this position? Let’s change the narrative.’"

Is it just us or does King James seem ready to go back to back? His Cavs got a boost, having acquired veteran point guard Deron Williams and center Andrew Bogut, although Bogut suffered a fractured tibia last night.

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