The name Tony Snell is perhaps not familiar to you unless you are an NBA fan. Snell was a first-round draft pick back in 2013, and he played about 600 regular career games in the NBA before retiring. Snell is now making the headlines for totally different reasons.

Last year, he was diagnosed with autism at age 31 — all because his own son was diagnosed with autism at 18 months old.

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I am a couple of years older than Snell, but I was diagnosed with autism when I was a young teenager back in 2002. Like Snell, I always found there was something special about me, but until I was diagnosed, I was labeled as something else in part due to my acute prematurity. Being diagnosed with autism for me was like completing a puzzle with all the pieces coming together at once.

Snell's story is inspiring, but it raises a serious dilemma that relatively high-functioning people on the spectrum have. He said in a recent interview, “I don’t think I'd have been in the NBA if I was diagnosed with autism [at my son's age]. Because back then, like, ‘What is autism?’ They’d probably put a limit or a cap on my abilities.”

What is fascinating about Snell is that he is an elite athlete despite having a neurological condition that people associate with poor coordination. Snell is incredibly gifted as an athlete; he was able to play basketball for the most competitive and elite league in the world for nearly a decade. Yet he would probably never have done it if he had an autism diagnosis at a young age like his own son.

This raises some serious questions about neurodiversity and how people are judged because of the autism epithet. On the one hand, society wants to be seen as more and more accepting of people with neurological conditions. But on the other hand, we put people with autism inside predetermined silos.

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Everybody with autism is different, and Snell's case is proof once again that you cannot equate every individual with autism with someone counting cards at a casino like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Someone on the autism spectrum can be anyone from a person with deep mobility issues who cannot do everyday tasks to a pro athlete who has played 600 regular season games in the NBA.

I do think that Snell can do a lot of good for the autism cause for the simple reason that a lot of people look up to pro athletes. Snell's magic is that perhaps the public will realize once and for all that every individual on the autistic spectrum is unique. Snell breaking the neurodiversity barrier as a professional athlete is an excellent thing. Perhaps people will see autistic people as who they are, with their own abilities and challenges, and not who they should be.

Mathieu Vaillancourt is a writer with a degree in international development and globalization from the University of Ottawa.