Professional athletes are used to getting special treatment when they dine at fancy restaurants on the road, but such was not the case for Anthony Davis and his teammates earlier this week — at least at first.
On Monday, the night before they took on the Lakers in L.A., a group of New Orleans Pelicans players were reportedly turned away from a Japanese restaurant in West Hollywood called Katana. A witness told Emily Smith of Page Six that the doorman objected to the hooded sweatshirt Davis was wearing.
“Davis was pleading with the doorman, saying, ‘Me and my teammates just want to get something to eat.’ He said he couldn’t take off the hoodie because he was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt underneath,” the witness recalled. “Davis even offered to spend a fortune to rent the private room, but the doorman said, ‘No you can’t come in wearing a hoodie.’ So Davis got back in his SUV and left, and only then did the restaurant manager come running out, freaking out at the doorman.”
Innovative Dining, which owns Katana, has a strict dress code on its website that states no one wearing “beachwear, athletic tops and T-shirts” will be allowed in the restaurant. It’s unclear if the manager cleared up the misunderstanding and made an exception for the players.
You can understand why a doorman at a restaurant with a strict dress code would not allow someone in who was wearing a hoodie, so it doesn’t sound like the incident was anything like the one we saw with a group of NFL players in London recently. Even the reigning All-Star Game MVP needs to dress up to dine out sometimes.
